New Delhi: Wary of being reduced to a minority in their own land by the huge influx of settlers from elsewhere, Khasi tribal chieftains in Meghalaya are offering cash rewards to women who bear more than a dozen children.
While the announcement has angered the women and health activists in the state, according to reports reaching here, the tribal chieftains have already paid Rs 16,000 each to four such women in the past two months in a bid to encourage the tribal women to have more babies.
"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," news agency AP quoted HS Shylla, a member of the Khasi Hills Autonomous District Council, as saying.
Tiny Meghalaya is one of the seven states in the remote Northeast where fears of migration from other parts of India and neighbouring Bangladesh have helped fuel separatist revolts in which tens of thousands have died.
The KHDAC, a powerful council elected by the Khasis, works with the state government on development issues and decides on customary laws of the community. The council selected the four women, who have had more than 15 children, to be 'role models'.
Health experts say the council's move is dangerous. "Making a woman bear so many children is like pushing the mother and her children to virtual death," Reuters quoted an official of the UN's children agency, UNICEF, as saying.
"A woman's body is not a baby-making machine," said Hasina Kharbhih, a leading woman activist in Meghalaya, who has strongly protested against this move.
The Khasi tribe, one of the few remaining matrilineal societies in the world, make up over 60 per cent of mountainous Meghalaya's population of around 2 million people. Khasi leaders say that, over the past 20 years, the proportion of their community as a percentage of the state's population has fallen.
"We can manage to hold sway over our land in this manner while, at the same time, there will be no bloodletting," Shylla told Reuters.
Amelia Sohtun, a tea-stall owner, who received 16,000 rupees from the council said she was happy with her role model tag. "Children are a gifts of God and he stopped giving me more at 42 years of age," said Sohtun from Rngi, a small village located on top of a hill, 30 km south of Shillong.
The illiterate wife of a labourer, whose youngest is four years old, has 16 children.
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