Dear Editor,
In my humble opinion, the basic fundamental flaw in our Arunachal politics is the lack of an Opposition on the floor of our Assembly hall. Professor Ian Shapiro points out that, “Democracy is an ideology of Opposition as much as it is one of Government”. That’s why in every progressive and healthy democracies of the world, we find strong opposition political parties in their law making bodies to check, criticize, scrutinize the govt. actions and policies. At centre we find the INC and BJP led alliances, in the UK they have the Liberals and the Conservatives and in the US, they have the Republicans and the Democrats. We also believe in the principles and ideals of democracy, but practically we find no opposition system or party in our polity. It is always a single party dominance- be it the BJP, the Congress whatever. No wonder, in the end unlike the rest of the world where the financially richest member of a society happens to be either a capitalist entrepreneur or a drug dealer, in Arunachal we have our elected representatives representing them.
With all my compassion for any people seeking asylum in Arunachal, I also believe that adopting the Tibetan Rehabilitation Policy would really be the first step towards adopting similar policies for other non-Arunachalee communities, which are numerous. Considering that we ourselves are a “Protected State”, it doesn’t make much sense to try to shoulder responsibilities of the world on our shoulders when we can’t do it for our own. I think it will only lead to more chaos and disorganization. But it doesn’t mean that the people of Arunachal do not help them, which they rather willingly do.
But even such a drastic Anti-Arunachalee policy could be adopted so callously by the govt., because of a lack of an effective opposition on the floors of our Assembly hall. No wonder, we have to resort to the AAPSU, which is actually supposed to be a student union body. That’s why I request every responsible people of Arunachal to vote and elect for a non-BJP/non-INC party for atleast one term, which I’m going to do (for the birth of an Opposition). It’s no use always blaming “the govt.” when we are partly responsible for it. I also request the sole indigenous regional party, the PPA to fight tooth and nail against this policy of the govt. and prove to the people of Arunachal that they need not worry or feel so apprehensive about it. BJP led govt. does not seems to be interested to protect the rights and interests of the indigenous people of the state.
Yours,
Dite Pertin
Itanagar