Editor,
The article by Patricia Mukhim, titled “Meghalaya’s poverty is at the root of its poor educational outcomes” (ST June 27, 2025) takes us straight to the heart of the matter.
The heartland of Meghalaya lies in the village communities scattered over the hills and dales of our state. Those of us who live in the comfort of Shillong are insulated from the misery of the hinterland by bad roads and apathy. Our clansmen and women are connected to us by blood and culture, but notions of class and money divide us.
A vicious cycle that begins in poverty plays out in the daily lives of our rural clans people. Landless and penniless, poverty first impacts their health and wellness because of the lack of food and essential nutrients.
A study by Dr Melari Nongrum, now at IIPH Shillong, showed the inadequacy of diets among Garo, Jaintia and Khasi women in the reproductive age. All groups had poor diets, with Khasi women having the least nutritious intake. There was a deficiency of foods with micro-nutrients such as vitamins and iron. When these women get pregnant, they tend to have low weight infants with poor nutritional reserves. These infants are prone to early malnutrition and stunting. Severe prolonged malnutrition may cause cognitive deficiency. These children are set up for poor performance in schools.
Another study by Dr Melody Marpna at MLCU, found seasonal malnutrition in children who appeared healthy during the rest of the year. This occurs in poor families in the autumn when money and stocks of paddy runs out, and the next harvest and its income has not yet arrived. Data showed more children hospitalised with severe acute malnutrition during this season. Many rural families resort to collecting wild edibles from the forest.
Poverty and malnutrition lead to high infant mortality. Some families compensate by having more children, so that at least some will survive. Contraception is often refused. Meghalaya has the lowest use of contraception in the country. In large families, there is not enough money for food, let alone for books and uniforms.
Girls drop out at puberty because of the lack of hygienic facilities at school and to help at home. Teenage pregnancies in Meghalaya are already high, and ours is the only state in which teenage pregnancies are increasing. Girls out of school are more vulnerable to pregnancy than school going girls. Early motherhood and lack of birth spacing perpetuate the high birth rate, malnutrition and poverty.
This never-ending cycle continues to blight our society. All these factors converge to poor learning outcomes. But poor educational indices are not the final outcome. Drop outs and poor academic performance leads to unemployability, depriving the state of talented human resources and slowing the pace of development and prosperity.
This vicious cycle cannot be broken overnight. It will take years of engagement with multiple social and economic factors. Some short term measures by the state government are encouraging such as the MPOWER project for improving adolescent skills and well-being, and the push to reduce maternal mortality, which has already shown improvement. Anganwadis provide a critical opportunity for early development, especially for children who receive little stimulation in the struggling home environment.
The poignant word that stood out in Patricia Mukhim’s article was “heartbreaking.” Children are innocent and voiceless, yet face a bleak future in our society. We need to do so much more for these blameless victims.
Yours etc.,
Glenn C. Kharkongor,
Via email
Men have the right to cry too!
Editor,
I cried for two months,” CM Conrad Sangma admitted in your front page article dated 29th June, and I was deeply moved. To see a man of such stature speak those words, printed boldly for the world to read, was nothing short of powerful due to the ability to be vulnerable & “let the world judge” kind of attitude.
Politics aside, in a world that often tells men to “man up” instead of open up, we’ve created generations of boys taught to bottle up what breaks them. They are told that tears make them weak, that vulnerability is shameful, that strength means silence. From the time they scrape a knee, little boys are told, ‘Don’t cry like a girl’ as if tears belong to one gender, and silence makes a man.
But the truth is, sometimes a man needs to cry not in secret, not in shame, but in the full light of his humanity. Tears are not failure; they are grief, healing, memory, and hope, raw and unfiltered. Tears mean something mattered deeply. Some men have broken down behind closed doors after losing dreams they poured their souls into. Some cried for weeks after defeat, rejection, heartbreak, or just the weight of carrying too much for too long. But from those tears came strength, not despite the breaking, but because of it. Rock bottom, I’ve learned, is not the end. It’s often the foundation for something new.
We must stop teaching boys to be emotionally mute. Let them cry. Let them feel. Let them rise from it. Tears aren’t weakness. They are water. And water grows things.
Yours etc.,
Shivani Pde,
Via email