Don’t count what Delhi is offering. Count what Delhi is eyeing. With that one line, VPP chief Ardent Miller Basaiawmoit has done what no other leader in Meghalaya has dared to do. He has asked the question that cuts through the noise of the UDP-BJP merger drama. What does BJP actually want from Meghalaya?
On paper, the deal looks simple. Reports say eight UDP MLAs are ready to join BJP if their two demands are met, include Khasi language in the Eighth Schedule and restart coal mining. It sounds like a win for Meghalaya. We get our language recognized, our miners get livelihood back, BJP gets its numbers in the Assembly. But the VPP chief is telling us to read the fine print. No national party, especially not BJP, comes to a small hill state out of love for its language. When BJP wants to govern Meghalaya, it is not doing us a favour. It is making an investment. And every investment expects a return. The return, Basaiawmoit hints, is yellow. Uranium yellow.
Look at what is happening around us. Just across the border in Jagiroad, Morigaon district in Assam, India is building its future. The Tata Electronics semiconductor plant, worth Rs 27,000 crore, will be India’s first chip fab. It will produce 48 million chips a day for phones, cars, missiles and AI servers. Prime Minister Modi himself laid its foundation and called it the foundation of Viksit Bharat. But there is a truth about chip plants no one talks about at foundation ceremonies. A semiconductor fab is one of the most power-hungry factories on earth. It needs round the clock, ultra stable, massive power, not solar that goes off in the evening, not coal that pollutes chips. The world powers its fabs with nuclear energy. And what is India’s declared plan? The Centre has announced a target of 100 GW nuclear power by 2047, a massive overhaul of nuclear laws to allow private players, all to feed this new chip and AI economy.
Where will that nuclear fuel come from? The answer is 90 km from Shillong. Domiasiat and Wahkyn in South West Khasi Hills hold an estimated 9,500 tonnes of uranium, one of the largest and highest-grade deposits in India. The Uranium Corporation of India Limited has been trying to mine it since the 1990s. For 30 years Meghalaya has said NO. Students protested, the church led prayers, NGOs blocked roads, and every government, even those supported by BJP from outside, was forced to keep the file closed because the people feared radiation, displacement and loss of land. That NO was possible only because Shillong could say NO to Delhi. What happens when Shillong and Delhi are ruled by the same party with absolute majority?
This is the real danger behind eight UDP MLAs joining BJP. Today it is about Khasi language, tomorrow it will be about a national interest project that cannot be stopped. The Centre will argue that Assam’s chip plant needs clean nuclear power, that nuclear power needs uranium, that uranium is in Meghalaya, and therefore mining it is in national interest. A BJP government in Meghalaya will find it very difficult to oppose a BJP government in Delhi. The language will be included in a book in Delhi, but the uranium will be taken out from the stomach of Meghalaya. Meghalaya will become what economists call a resource colony. Assam gets the high-tech jobs, the chip factory, the headlines. Meghalaya gets the mines, the radiation risk, the trucks and the waste. We have seen this before with coal and limestone. Our hills are blasted, our rivers turn acidic, the cement factories come up in Assam and Bangladesh.
Basaiawmoit is right when he says the activism of the 1990s will not work today. In the 1990s you could block a road and stop a project. Today a notification from Delhi is enough to start a mine, and social media will brand anyone who opposes it as anti-national and anti-development. The question is not whether Khasi should be in Eighth Schedule. It must be. The question is whether we should trade our right to say NO for it. A language is identity, but land is existence. You can survive without your language in the Eighth Schedule; you cannot survive if your land becomes radioactive. If UDP MLAs want to join BJP, they must first tell the people of South West Khasi Hills, will you sign an affidavit that you will never allow uranium mining? Will BJP give in writing that Domiasiat will never be mined? If not, then the VPP chief’s warning is prophetic. Do not look at what BJP is ready to give. Look at what BJP wants to take.
