The Punjab government has roped in actor-activist Shabana Azmi to wage a renewed war against female foeticide in the state.
CHANDIGARH: After the Akal Takht issuing a 'hukamnaama' (edict) ostracising Sikhs resorting to female foeticide, the Punjab government has roped in actor-activist Shabana Azmi to wage a renewed war against the menace.
Shabana would be heading the state-level consultative committee entrusted with the task of educating people and spreading the message of female power in Punjab, which is credited with one of the poorest sex ratios in the country.
The problem of female foeticide had recently brought shame to the state when more than 80 fetuses were found buried in a well near Patiala. The subsequent investigations by the health department revealed that due to the connivance of doctors and owners of diagnostic clinics, particularly in sub-urban and rural areas, incidents of female foeticide had continued unabated. The state subsequently cancelled licenses of more than three dozen diagnostic clinics, besides taking punitive action against doctors.
Presiding over the first meeting of the consultative committee in Jalandhar last week, Shabana wanted people to develop zero tolerance against female foeticide. Health minister Surinder Singla said though the committee has been in existence for some time, it had been revived with Shabana as its head to meet the challenge posed by the killing of the unborn girl.
"Is it not strange that a state as beautiful as Punjab that has given so much to the country has such a dismal sex ratio," Shabana said. What is needed, she insisted, is a "zero-tolerance approach" to female foeticide. "Women are achieving so much and yet they are not being allowed to be born. This is unacceptable," she said. She talked of how her mother was asked to abort her because her father had to go underground being a member of the then banned Communist Party of India and there was no one to take care of her mother.
"She fought like a tigress to keep me and for someone who had never worked in her entire life she said she would do anything to keep herself and her baby alive. That is how I came into this world," she recounted.
The committee decided that a commercial mainstream Punjabi serial be produced on the girl child. Singla agreed to provide the finance for the serial, while Azmi promised to find a writer and producer for the same.
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