MP Rakesh Sinha presents development report of ‘whistling village’ to PM

“I first visited the village in 2018 and continued to go there over the following years. I became attached to the people. I had raised the issue of the dying culture of the whistling village in Parliament. On August 14, 2019, I adopted the village under the Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojana (SAGY) and have been focusing on the development work there, to make it a model village in the region,’’said Sinha.

SAGY was launched in 2014 under which each Member of Parliament was to adopt the gram panchayat of a village.

Kongthong is located in the East Khasi Hills in Meghalaya and is popular as the ‘whistling village’ due to its unique tradition of ‘Jingrwai Lawbei’ under which mothers create a tune for their newborns. These tunes are often used as names. Kongthong people belong to the Seng Khasi Tribe and speak Khasi language. According to Census 2011, the village has a population of 567, out of which 275 are males and 275 are females, and a literacy rate of 55%.

A tune in the name of Prime Minister Modi was composed by Kong Shidiat Khongsit, which was later tweeted by the PM himself.