Meghalaya has the propensity to hit the headlines for various reasons. For years, Cherrapunji and Mawsynram have brought it fame as the wettest places on earth. Tourists rave about the exquisite orchids and wine the abode of clouds has on offer. The state’s politicians make news by exhibiting an uncanny ability to hold on to power for the shortest possible time. And one of them has now catapulted Meghalaya into the limelight again by daring to defy a national policy.

He was born Hispreaching Son Shylla, and over the past couple of weeks, this maverick politician has certainly been preaching with a vengeance. In a country bursting at the seams, his sermon to those in the Khasi hills has been to go forth and multiply.

Every indigenous tribal under the Khasi Hills Autonomous District Council with more than 15 children is on Shylla’s “felicitation list”. He bestows cash rewards (Rs 1,000 per child) from the funds of this council over which he lords as chief executive member.

Doling out “cash incentives” may be a new ploy, but Shylla the politician has been advocating his “more the merrier” formula for over a decade now. I first heard Shylla waxing on his pet theme at an election campaign in Shillong in 1993. As a Congress candidate, he was passionately exhorting the gathering to “breed them out”. It took a while to fathom that Shylla’s “them” referred to “outsiders” or “non-tribals” who, he fears, will swamp the local populace. “Let us not become another Tripura,” he thundered, referring to the state which has more non-tribals than tribals.

Last month, Shylla justified his stand by saying: “We have no option but to increase our Khasi population to control the pressure of outsiders coming to our land.” According to the last census, the Khasi-Jaintia population stood at 10 lakh. The council, if Shylla has his way, will see a doubling of this figure.

Courting controversy is second nature to Shylla. He invited the wrath of the lo- cal non-governmental organizations and associations like the firebrand Khasi Students Union, by giving “clearance” to the Uranium Corporation of India Limited to mine the ore at Domiasiat and Wahkaji in West Khasi Hills. The state’s minister for sports and youth affairs, Paul Lyngdoh, dared Shylla to a public debate when he sanctioned a road for the uranium-mining zone. The drama snowballed into a major confrontation and the Congress leadership tried, although in vain, to strip him of his powers.

There is ample resentment over the overlapping powers exercised by the district council — formulated under provisions of the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution — and the government. Last weekend, for instance, a cabinet committee was constituted with terms of reference to introduce a three-tier identity card system and work permits to check influx into Meghalaya. Earlier, it was the district council that issued such permits. But steeped as it is in corruption and incompetence, there is now a popular demand to restructure the council.

Before he headed the Khasi Hills Autonomous District Council, Shylla was speaker of the Meghalaya assembly and subsequently a minister. He even took a “spiritual break” from politics in the past decade. Now he plans to move the Supreme Court to exempt Khasis from the national population control policy.

In Meghalaya’s matrilineal set-up, the children get the mother’s clan name. So it is the women who are about to reap the rewards of Shylla’s ‘mission’.

For instance, 46-year-old Amelia Sohtun was gifted Rs 16,000 on November 9 for bearing 17 children, one of whom is dead. Her husband is a non-tribal, but Shylla has conveniently glossed over that, asserting “cross-marriages are accepted in our society.” He has, of course, been among those who fuelled regional sentiments for decades over non-tribals marrying tribal women.

Shylla, therefore, ensured that the next two women he rewarded had tribal spouses. On November 22, he gave Rs 15,000 each to Dorothea Kharbani, who originally had 25 children, of whom 15 have survived, and Philomina Sohlangpiaw, for giving birth to 18, of whom two are dead. The felicitation was held at Nongstoin in West Khasi Hills district.

Shylla insists that his baby-boomer strategy will serve a social cause. He has convinced himself that the threat of being outnumbered is forcing tribal youth to take to insurgency. However, he fails to explain how these overwhelmingly large families, whose sole earner is usually a vegetable vendor (like Sohtun’s husband) or a poor farmer, or a masseur (as in the case of Kharbani’s husband, Wilbert Marwein) can make ends meet.

The drive against illegal infiltration is routinely conducted in all the north-eastern states, especially those bordering Bangladesh. Meghalaya, too, administers these time-tested mechanisms, which Shylla and his kind find grossly inadequate. What they fail to realize is that even without Shylla’s prescription, India, with 2.4 per cent of the globe’s land area, is inching towards 20 per cent of the world’s population. If the current trend continues, India may overtake China in 2045 to become the most populous country in the world.

According to our national population policy, “India’s current annual increase in population of 15.5 million is already large enough to neutralize efforts to conserve the resource endowment and environment.”

Given the circumstances, would the enterprising Congress leader care to elaborate on his resource management plans once the hills are alive with the babble of 20-lakh voices as a result of this safety-in-numbers drive? Will all the uranium, cement and limestone (or oranges and plums) of Meghalaya feed the multitude?

If his hypothesis of influx breeding insurgency is correct, then what about the theory of militancy being a fallout of unemployment and disillusionment? Shylla is so enamoured of the limelight that justifying his blatant misuse of funds or his going against the national policy will perhaps be the last thing on his mind.