Female foeticide in Maharashtra a big concern

At a time when the women’s bill received precedence over other issues in the country, political parties in Maharashtra have come together to revolt against female foeticide, which shows no sign of abatement in the absence of stringent laws.

The ruling Congress and NCP women leaders have written to chief minister Ashok Chavan urging him to put to service the entire administration to combat the social evil. The sex ratio in state is 927 females per 1,000 males. The figures in Mumbai are 922 females per 1,000 males.

A sources in the government said, “Despite a massive campaign undertaken in the past five years, the ratio of male and female shows no signs of improvement.”

According to a senior minister, the abortion of female foetuses which was prevalent in urban areas is now spreading to rural Maharashtra. “The awareness campaign in some districts (western Maharashtra) has not borne fruit as rural families see the pre-natal sex determination test as an opportunity rather than a social evil,” said the minister.

Former health minister Vimal Mundada, who had initiated laws to eradicate the problem, said, “The biggest challenge is to change the mindset of the educated and economically forward class among whom the illegal abortion of the female child is prevalent.”

Even the women bureaucrats admit that female foeticide remains a larger issue that needs to be tackled.Additional municipal commissioner Manisha Mhaiskar said, “In my earlier posting in Sangli, we adopted various strategies to plug the problem and expose the clinics promoting pre-natal sex determination test. But it was not an easy task to bring them to book.” She said that the operators would camouflage the reports with code words like ‘Monday’ for boy and ‘Friday’ for the girl child.

A study conducted by the state shows that the tribal and backward region of Gadchiroli has the highest acceptance of the girl child, and the lowest is in Satara/Kolhapur (western Maharashtra). Mumbai too can drop its head in shame as incidents of female foeticide are not low in the city.