Tribal leaders in India's remote northeast are offering cash rewards to women who bear more than a dozen children in a bid to keep from being outnumbered by settlers from elsewhere, a leader said yesterday.
In the past two months, Khasi tribal chieftains in Meghalaya State have paid 16,000 rupees (US$348) each to four such women including 45-year-old Amilia Sohtun, who has 17 children, said H.S. Shylla, a member of the Khasi Hills Autonomous District Council.
Sohtun runs a tea stand at Laitkor Peak, a tourist spot near Meghalaya's capital, Shillong.
Tribal elders defended the move, which has infuriated many women and health activists.
"Our community faces a genuine threat of being outnumbered by outsiders, and the only way we can prevent our race from becoming extinct is to ensure our population rises soon enough," Shylla said.
The council is an elected administrative body of tribal leaders in Meghalaya. It works with the state government on development issues, and makes decisions regarding customary community rules.
The Khasis, numbering less than a million, are the majority community in Christian-dominated Meghalaya, which has 2.5 million people.
"The community is worried about an unabated influx of migrants from outside the state," Shylla said.
However, some in the state decried the incentive program.
"We oppose the idea because no one has the right to keep having babies unless she can provide them with a quality life," said Theilin Phanbuh, an activist in Shillong.
"It is for the authorities to check the influx or settlement of outsiders in traditional land belonging to our people. Increasing our community's population by having more children is not the answer," she said.
Meghalaya health activist Hasina Kharbhih also slammed the idea.
"A woman's body is not a machine that she can go on having babies. The government must intervene on the Khasi Council's decision because of the health issues involved," she said.
Shylla said the decision to pay mothers of more than 12 "has been generally welcomed."
The council has received four more requests for cash incentives from women with more than a dozen children, Shylla said.
In Meghalaya's matrilineal society, a man moves into his bride's home and their children take the mother's maiden name.
Meghalaya is one of the seven states in India's northeast where fears of migration from other parts of India and Bangladesh have helped fuel separatist revolts.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
Two Belgian teenagers on Tuesday were charged with wildlife piracy after they were found with thousands of ants packed in test tubes in what Kenyan authorities said was part of a trend in trafficking smaller and lesser-known species. Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, two 19-year-olds who were arrested on April 5 with 5,000 ants at a guest house, appeared distraught during their appearance before a magistrate in Nairobi and were comforted in the courtroom by relatives. They told the magistrate that they were collecting the ants for fun and did not know that it was illegal. In a separate criminal case, Kenyan Dennis
‘POINT OF NO RETURN’: The Caribbean nation needs increased international funding and support for a multinational force to help police tackle expanding gang violence The top UN official in Haiti on Monday sounded an alarm to the UN Security Council that escalating gang violence is liable to lead the Caribbean nation to “a point of no return.” Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Haiti Maria Isabel Salvador said that “Haiti could face total chaos” without increased funding and support for the operation of the Kenya-led multinational force helping Haiti’s police to tackle the gangs’ expanding violence into areas beyond the capital, Port-Au-Prince. Most recently, gangs seized the city of Mirebalais in central Haiti, and during the attack more than 500 prisoners were freed, she said.
RSS