Dear Editor,
Every year in every school all over the state, hundreds of students dropout from their studies in mid-season. The majority of these drop-out are girls in their early teenaged years. The most serious reason for leaving their study mid-term is because of pregnancy.
It’s not to be assumed that these drop-out students, specially girls does not want to go to school. No, they are not. In fact some of these little girls who leaves school are the most punctual, sincere and brilliant among peers in their respective schools.
It is the curiosity and a taste for our primordial instinctive libido that they become prey and face serious repercussions. It is for shame of their own doing and the jeering, tirades and rants from family and society that they are forced to leave school. Thus ruining their beautiful life that they were enjoying and above all the one that awaits them in near future. Compelled to leave education, they have no other option but to be a mother and housewife. Thereby forced and subjugated; when these children were just beginning to know themselves and the world around them; they are burdened with motherhood and running family.
This problem is more prominent especially in government schools of Secondary and Higher Secondary levels of small administrative towns of Arunachal. There has never been a data report on this issue. If one could, then, it would be astounding and alarming. It is like an epidemic which is engulfing our young and brilliant brothers and sisters of Arunachal.
Adding more woe to this epidemic is that in most of our tribal society; the word ‘sex and it’s connotation is still considered a taboo. Talk on sex is a subject especially reserved for older man and woman. For the society that we live in, we are still very much obsessed with virginity. And as for girls, that once your body is touched by someone, it is considered as a stigma by the society. That once you have become pregnant or a mother, you have no more future. Such is the retarded mentality of our society although we are living in the 21st century.
In such circumstances, awareness campaign and programme on sex education could come in handy for those forsaken helpless people. That it is natural for every human to have that primordial sexual desire, that being pregnant is human; but it’s totally unnatural and inhuman to be a school dropout and be a mother or father at such tender age. Let us enlighten our generation.
Yours,
Kana Naya