PEOPLE AND THEIR PROBLEMS

New Delhi, 17 March 2006

Sick Social Matrix

INDIA’S  ‘MISSING’ GIRLS

By Radhakrishna Rao

A well-documented study carried in the prestigious British medical journal “Lancet” makes the startling revelation that around ten million female foetuses may have been aborted in India over the last two decades .Lancet traced this unhealthy trend to the rapid proliferation of clinics and nursing homes offering foetus screening services all over the country and the excessive craving for the male progeny which is deep rooted in the Indian psyche. The researchers from India and Canada who carried out this path breaking study found that in cases where the preceding child was a girl, the gender ratio for a second birth was just 759 girls for 1000 boys.

Further the study drives home the point that when the two previous children were girls, the ratio fell even further to 719 girls to 1000 boys. According to Prabhat Jha of St .Michael’s  Hospital at the University of Toronto in Canada, who was one of the researchers’  associated. “We conservatively estimated that prenatal sex determination and selective abortion account for 0.5-million missing girls yearly. If this practice has been common, for most of the past two decades since access to ultrasound technology became widespread, then a figure of 10 million missing female births would not be unreasonable”.

For long, Punjab has stood out conspicuously for its alarmingly high  female foeticide  rate in the country .Surprisingly, the  educated and affluent have been described as the worst culprits in so far as the trend of female foeticide is concerned .No wonder, Punjab tops the list of Indian States known for their worst  child sex ratio. It has a sex ratio of 874 girls for 1000 boys against the national average of 933. In the long run, this trend would lead to a kind of social disaster from which Punjab might find it difficult to extricate.

Punjab is known to lose one fourth all girls who would be born. Appalled by growing and inexorable trend of female foeticide, villages in some parts of the State have launched a social crusade against this modern day evil. In fact, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, expressing his disapproval  of the ongoing female foeticide in the State had sometime back observed,  “I was shocked to  discover that  there has been a sharp increase in female foeticide in Punjab .This is a blot on the name  of the valiant and gallant people”

Sociologists are clear in their perception that a huge dowry associated with marrying of a girl is a major factor pushing the people of Punjab into the clutches of “female foeticide”. Moreover, as per the Hindu tradition, only a male could lit the pyre of his dead father or mother. Added to that, a male child is considered a safety net in the evening of one’s life.

Significantly, even the edict issued by the religious leaders against female foeticide have failed to reverse the trend of female foeticide in Punjab. Of course, there are both Central and State legislations to prevent the misuse of  foetus scanning technology for sex determination,  followed by female foeticide. But unfortunately so far only a handful of medical practitioners offering “female foeticide” services in the pretext of prenatal screening have been brought to book by the law enforcing agencies in the country.

According to sociologists, the growing number of  abortions consequent to  the foetal scanning  showing the foetus to be female shows the complicity of private medical practitioners  in perpetuating this high tech atrocities on the women. Emergence of more advanced technologies that could be exploited to identify the sex of the foetus, can play havocs in the Indian social setting, which has an explosive mix of advanced medical technologies and an impoverished population group with a fanatic bias for the male progeny.

In fact, a favourite justification for supporting the practice of female feoticide  is that it serves as an effective tool of family planning .But many   field surveys have gone to show that  sex determination tests can only ensure multiple abortions with perilous consequences for the well being of a female .As it is, the lack of food, clean drinking water, economic security and safe clinical facilities  could lead to a situation where women has to have over six children to ensure one surviving male child. Indeed, as one research study points out, Any further reduction in the sex ratio in North India would signify a continuing decline  in the relative status of women and it would be unlikely to offer any benefit to the women.”

In India, where religious texts and epics glorify woman as the Mother  Goddess, sociologists and  historians perceive deep in the Indian psyche an extreme dislike for the supposed weaker sex. Not surprisingly then certain communities in the Indian states of Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu are known for indulging in female infanticide though of late due to the honest and vigorous efforts by the government sponsored agencies and voluntary organizations, such heinous practice is fast disappearing. In fact, the evil of female infanticide in India was sustained by the forces of illiteracy, social backwardness, poverty and economic deprivation and social discrimination as well as the regressive dowry system.

In the villages of Rajasthan where the time stands still, one will not be surprised to find an abnormally large number of little boys. Rajput women in the remote rural pockets used to put their female infants into death with stunning professional efficiency. “We either put a wet sand bag on her face so that she chokes to death or give her double dose of opium” quips an elderly Rajput woman.

Down south in Tamila Nadu, a state known for its excellent track record in curbing infant mortality rate, population growth, illiteracy as well as malnutrition in women and children was not long back in limelight for female infanticide indulged in certain communities in the state. However, following the vigorous intervention by various agencies of the State Government this practice is  slowly becoming a thing of the past. However, it would take some time and effort to eliminate this social evil in toto from the map of the State.

In the Kallar-dominated Usilampatti,Alikadam and Kallatheer hamlets in Madurai, female infanticide was till sometime back an accepted norm. In fact, a survey carried out by the Indian Council of Child Welfare(ICCW)in early 1990s, of the 400 infant deaths reported from the villages around the temple town of Madurai, 181 were traceable to the female infanticide. Other pockets where female infanticide used to be reported during 1990s are Dhrampuri, Salem and North Arcot.

“We have lived a miserable life. Why bring more girls in the world to face a similar fate” said a woman working as a farm hand in the remote village of the water scarce Dharmapuri district. In variably, the women who killed their infants revealed that the dowry system, grinding poverty  and the harassment  from inebriated  spouses have prompted them to send their  female  child to the abode of Yama (the God of death in the Hindu mythology).

In the ultimate analysis both the female foeticide and female infanticide reflect a diseased state of the Indian social matrix and only a concerted educational drive supported by a solid ground level action aimed at improving the socio economic conditions of the masses along with making available health and educational facilities to the poorest of the poor alone can help end these social evils.---INFA

(Copyright, India News and Feature Alliance)