National Girl Child Day 2020: Why ‘Beti Bachao’ Is An Alien Concept To Northeast India

A sister of sorts to PM Modi’s Beti Bachao program, National Girl Child Day is observed in India every year on January 24 to highlight the inequalities faced by girl child. The day first proposed by the Ministry of Women and Child Development hence attempts to promote awareness on a range of topics including rights of a girl child, importance of education, health, and nutrition and basically all other basic rights that a girl child is stripped off of for being born a gender that is still seen as a burden in many parts of India.

For many of us, the northeast part of the country shamefully came into the mention of our GK book because of the ongoing CAA protests. A place most neglected yet the most progressed in terms of human rights, northeast India boasts of having the highest literacy rate. It also is one of the only places in India where the power-game is of the reverse, meaning women are seen as a men-equal.

Uplifted some 1496 metres above sea level, Meghalaya in northeast part of India reverses the patriarchal game by being one of the only matrilineal system in India. Nicknamed "the Scotland of the East" by early European settlers, the Meghalaya people of Khasis and Jaintias, much like the Mosuo of China operates with property names and wealth passing from mother to daughter rather than father to son. Known as the "Khatduh", the youngest daughter holds the family, looking after elderly parents, giving shelter and care to unmarried brothers and sisters, and watching over property.

In terms of literacy, with the exception of Arunachal Pradesh and Assam, the remaining six northeastern states have a higher literacy rate than the national average, there is a definite rise of the female literate class in the Northeast societies leading to less gender disparity across the region such as Meghalaya, Mizoram, and Nagaland. A 2013 record showed that the literacy rate of females during the period of 2001 and 2011 census rose from 64.91 to 83.15 per cent. In Manipur, the prevalence of women’s markets is marked as a cause for the reduced gender gap. The state of Mizoram also records the highest percentage of female workforce in India at 59% in contrast to Jammu & Kashmir which records the lowest at 7.9% in 2018. All these however, does not mean that the region is en-route as the next Norway of India, no. Like most part of the region, the region still suffers the lack of proper separate toilets for female children leading many to drop out from schools.

The apex point to be noted is that women have never need to fight their way for their basic rights because tradition itself allows the girl child in the tribal societies of the northeastern states a far better space of education, health care and everything a male child in traditional Indian societies enjoy. Hence the Beti Padhao campaign of the Government of India that aims to generate awareness and improve the efficiency of welfare services intended for girls in India had already been in practice in Northeast India even before the government launched its concept in 2015.