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The missing daughters

All this merely because lakhs of girls are choked to death before they can complete one year and another few lakhs are killed in the womb every year.

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The official assessment puts the number of female foeticide operations conducted in the country at around 20 lakh cases per year but NGOs claim that it is not less than 50 lakh

NEW DELHI: In a recent judgment, the Bombay High Court ruled against a plea seeking quashing of an amendment to Preconception and Prenatal Diagnostic Techniques Act (PCPNDT) that prohibits sex-determination. While upholding the amendment, the court said that sex determination was against the spirit of the Constitution. The court’s intention was also to drive home the message loud and clear that aborting girl child is simply not affordable anymore considering the skewed sex ratio in the country and the chaos that it could lead to in society.

In fact, the chaos has already begun and the imbalance is showing. While dead fetuses are being discovered from the paddy fields of Orissa, Punjab and Haryana and the ultrasound clinics and doctors are minting money in bargain for the death of a baby girl. Men from the north’s two richest states are now begging for women and their love — and in many cases, even buying them from the market.

A woman in India can be bought for Rs400, roughly the same amount one would pay for a bottle of wine, says a UN-funded study, Trafficking of Women and Children in India, conducted by the New Delhi-based Institute of Social Sciences. 

All this merely because lakhs of girls are choked to death before they can complete one year and another few lakhs are killed in the womb every year. The official assessment put the number of female foeticide operations conducted in the country to around 20 lakh cases per year but NGOs claim that it is nothing less than 50 lakh.

Besides Punjab and Haryana, the two most notorious states for choking their newborn daughters to death, in Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Delhi, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, and Rajasthan too the sex ratio has plummeted to around 850 women for every 1,000 men. In specific communities of Bihar and Rajasthan, the ratio is a mere 600 females for 1,000 males. The 2001 census sex ratio indicating 933 females per 1,000 men is among the lowest in the world.

In 1991 there was only one district — Salem in Tamil Nadu —where the sex ratio of girls was below 800 but by 2001 the number of such districts had risen to 45. The 10 best-rated districts are in Arunachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, Orissa and Sikkim where technology has not reached and nature plays a more dominant role.

“Contrary to belief, surveys show that female foeticide and sex determination tests are not prevalent in rural areas.

Urban areas of many states have some shocking sex ratios,” said women and child development minister Renuka Chowdhury.

The government says it has already sounded Red Alert and decided to dedicate next ten years to the girl child. Officials say that the government is adopting a multi-pronged approach to tackle female foeticide which includes awareness and gender sensitisation.

“To rescue the abandoned girl children we are going to launch palna (cradle) scheme where we will ask people to give the girl child to government orphanages instead of killing them,” Chowdhury added.

“Female foeticide should be treated as a crime and not just a social evil, therefore, stringent punishment and punitive action is required,” she said.

Stringent implementation of the PNDT Act is what the health ministry is also pressing for. “If the provisions of the Act are enforced effectively, it can substantially curb such practices and send a loud and clear message to the violators,” said health and family welfare minister Anbumani Ramadoss.

Women’s rights activist Ranjana Kumari questions the intention of the government. “Crores of rupees are spent by the government to save the tigers. What about women? Is this specie close to extinction? A three-member team in health ministry is dealing with the problem of such enormous magnitude,” said Kumari, director of the centre for social research, a non-governmental organisation, which is working on the issues, related to women’s rights and a member of the government’s PCPNDT monitoring committee.

Foetal sex determination and sex selective abortion by medical professionals has grown into a Rs. 1,000 crore industry. The battle is a long drawn out one but the fight can be won, just the way Punjab’s Lakhanpal village in Punjab  has. It has 1,400 females for every 1,000 males.

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