The concerns articulated by Member of District Council (MDC), Teilinia Thangkhiew in the Khasi Hills Autonomous District Council (KHADC) merits serious consideration. Meghalaya is plagued by a peculiar malaise of women being abandoned by their husbands and left to fend for themselves and their children. If a woman is well placed and has a stable income this may not be problematic but a large number of women even in the city of Shillong fall in the category of destitutes. Their children drop out of school or have never seen what a school looks like. They are sent to work or sell wares and soon join the gang of street kids. How these abandoned kids will grow up can well be imagined.
The Khasi matrilineal system has never been stringent about marriage bonds since time immemorial. A man could leave his wife when he chose to and never look back. Women took this with equanimity because they could fall back on their maternal families and the clan support system. But with the passage of time clan and family ties are fast eroding. Each family struggles to make ends meet and cannot possibly extend charity to their kin. Hence an abandoned woman, as Teilinia Thangkhiew points out must take up any kind of work to keep the home fires burning. Many are even forced into commercial sex work at great cost to their own health.
While some male colleagues of Ms Thangkhiew supported her call for enacting a more stringent Marriage Act where even those who do not believe in exchanging formal marriage vows, but who follow the Khasi tradition of cohabitation, would need to register their union so that the woman is protected in case the man walks out on her, others seemed to side-track the issue. One MDC even brought in the issue of Khasi women marrying non-Khasis or non-tribals and that the non-tribals then exploit the tribal status of their wives for the sake of business and profit. This is a separate problem and while it is also an important one, it cannot be used to side-track the case brought forward by Ms Thangkhiew. Each of the issues must be looked at from separate prisms.
It is heartening to note that the KHADC or rather the Councillors are today engaging with serious societal matters instead of simply looking at budget figures and how much money is allocated for what. The likes of Ms Thangkhiew need to gear up to take on more responsible roles as state legislators!