In-conversation With CM Conrad Sangma

An exclusive, exhaustive interview with the new Chief Minister of Meghalaya, Conrad Sangma.

- Nasreen Habib

Good education and basic healthcare were your main poll planks, what is the roadmap you have envisioned for Meghalaya?

There are many things that are important. But these are the basic social sectors that affect a lot of people. And that’s the reason why we talk more about it. But if you look at it, there are different aspects. Number one of course is the entire aspect of governance as a whole. I feel that governance has been missing in our state. Proper accountability has not been there, proper implementation of projects has not been there, proper monitoring has not been there. So, on a large scale, you will see that governance has really suffered. And since governance has not been there, you have seen that all schemes have actually performed badly. That’s number one. So, we want to ensure that good governance comes in and ensure that good policy making is there, and number three, I think, accountability should be there.

So, these are three-four aspects of governance which we want. There are important sectors like infrastructure. Infrastructure means road, electricity, water, even telecommunications, is important to us. Social sectors like education, health, food and civil supplies, women, social welfare will also be our priorities. Then obviously the third factor that comes in is about youth and empowerment of youth via job creation and industrial growth. So we feel that there are areas we need to work on like tourism. Now we talk about health and education because it’s something that touches every life. It’s an issue that is affecting every individual in our State and so we talk about it more because people connect to it. There are many other issues that are there and we have gone into a broad spectrum of things. But we don’t talk about all of them. But in our agenda it’s very much there.

Would codification of customary laws also be on your agenda?