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.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
CONFIDENT ON DEAL: ‘Ukraine wants a seat at the table, but wouldn’t the people of Ukraine have a say? It’s been a long time since an election, the US president said US President Donald Trump on Tuesday criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and added that he was more confident of a deal to end the war after US-Russia talks. Trump increased pressure on Zelenskiy to hold elections and chided him for complaining about being frozen out of talks in Saudi Arabia. The US president also suggested that he could meet Russian President Vladimir Putin before the end of the month as Washington overhauls its stance toward Russia. “I’m very disappointed, I hear that they’re upset about not having a seat,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida when asked about the Ukrainian
RSS