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Agatha
Sangma
A
Youthful Minister From India’s Garo Hills
BY
RAMESH JAURA
She
can easily pass off as a university student. Not only because she is
rather young-looking and unpretentious but also because she is dressed
so simple that you would not associate her with the keynote speaker at
the opening of the Asia-Pacific Regional Seminar on ‘Indigenous
Peoples, Climate Change and Rural Poverty’.
But she is indeed Agatha Sangma, minister of state for rural development
in the Government of India, headed by Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh.
While you feel embarrassed for not recognizing her, she is unruffled and
says: “I am used to it.” Indeed she is – since she entered the
lower house of parliament (Lok Sabha) in May 2008 at the age of 27 in a
bye-election from her father’s constituency of Tura in the West Garo
hills in the small northeastern state of Meghalaya, literally meaning
the 'Abode of Clouds'.
Her father, Purno Agitok Sangma – a veteran political leader –
remained a member of the Lok Sabha for eight terms spanning some 40
years. He held several important ministerial posts in the Government of
India, and was Lok Sabha Speaker – president of the lower house of
parliament – before deciding to quit national politics.
Agatha Sangma was re-elected to the Lok Sabha in the April-May 2009
countrywide polls.
Her brothers James and Conrad are also in state politics; her sister
Christie is the only one who has not entered politics.
The Asian Forum of Parliamentarians for Population and Development (AFPPD)
invited her as a keynote speaker because she belongs to the scheduled
tribes as recognized in India’s Constitution, and holds the portfolio
of rural development in India’s union cabinet – both qualifying her
to speak about indigenous peoples and alleviating poverty in rural
areas.
Agatha Sangma grew up in an intensely political atmosphere – like
Indira Gandhi, the daughter of the first Prime Minister of India,
Jawaharlal Nehru, though in post-Independence India.
Indira Gandhi served as prime minister for a total of 15 years – three
consecutive terms from 1966 to 1977 and for a fourth term from 1980
until her assassination in 1984. She was India's first, and to date
only, female prime minister.
Agatha Sangma does not see any parallels between herself and Indira
Gandhi.
Though, a gentle pride creeps in, when in her keynote address she refers
a couple of times to “my government”, a phrase that one would not
expect to hear from a minister of state, elaborating the government’s
policy and actions for the benefit of the indigenous peoples or
scheduled tribes.
Agatha Sangma holds M.A. degree in Environmental Management from
Nottingham University in the UK, Diploma in Cyber Laws; Diploma in
Corporate Laws, Diploma in Human Rights Laws, and Diploma in Securities
and Investment Laws.
She is a keen student of Machiavelli – a sixteenth century Italian
philosopher and writer, who is considered one of the main founders of
modern political science. Like the versatile Leonardo da Vinci, renowned
as painter and sculptor, Machiavelli is on the one hand considered a
good example of the ‘Renaissance Man’ whose expertise spans a
significant number of different subject areas.
On the other, however, one would tend to link Machiavelli with his
political treatise ‘The Prince’ which – rightly or wrongly – has
come to symbolize the methodical exercise of punishment-and-reward
tactics in politics to preserve power and status quo.
Time will tell where and how Agatha Sangma will deploy the tactics of
‘The Prince’. But the fact is that she knows how to bring to bear
her point of view from behind the scene.
When the Asia-Pacific parliamentarians discussed the ‘draft statement
of commitment’ on March 26, the second day of the AFPPD regional
seminar in the Philippine capital, she saw to it that the “Adivasi,
scheduled tribes, hill tribes, national minorities, among others” were
not referred to as “other names” by which the indigenous peoples
around the world are known.
Agatha Sangma has a point there. Though the UN has not adopted an
official definition of “indigenous”, the widely accepted view is
that indigenous peoples are those who inhabited a country or a
geographical region at the time when people of different cultures or
ethnic origins arrived. The new arrivals later became dominant through
conquest, occupation, settlement or other means.
This, she says, is not the case in India. But there are about 82 million
people in India “who are among the most vulnerable and are known as
Scheduled Tribes” of which she is a part. She belongs to the Garo
tribe.
Most of the scheduled tribes reside in forested areas and about half of
them live below poverty line. They are grouped into about 700 tribes.
Among these tribes there are some still at pre-agricultural stage, and
are known as ‘Primitive Tribe Groups’ (PTGs). Now they have been
identified ‘Most Vulnerable Tribal Groups’ (MVTGs). Like in other
parts of the world, these tribes are dependent on forest based natural
resources for their survival.
“In India, we respect their culture, traditions and ethos,” she
tells Asia-Pacific parliamentarians and media. She points out – in a
tender rhetorical style – that since the days of India’s first Prime
Minister Nehru, “we have adopted the ‘Panchsheel principle’ which
basically means development of these tribes as per their own wisdom and
ethics, without imposition of outside culture and influence”.
That Agatha Sangma should evoke Nehru who died sixteen years before she
was born, is far from self-evident. In fact, there is a growing tendency
among those in her age-group to ignore at best a critical phase of
post-Independence India through which Nehru skillfully steered the
country.
Others, however, criticize Nehru for representing, to some extent, the
moral conscience of thinking humanity, and aspirations of the newly
independent countries without being in a position to back these up with
the necessary strength that neither India nor other Asian countries
possessed in a world caught in the fever of the cold war.
[Source:
IDN-InDepthNews
| Analysis That Matters]
_____________
Ramesh
Jaura is chief editor of
IDN-InDepthNews
and GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES that belong to the GLOBALOM MEDIA group.
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