WUNRN
India
to Pay Families Cash to Protect Girls
03
Mar 2008
Reuters
NEW
DELHI, March 3 (Reuters) - India is offering to pay poor families nearly $3,000
to bring up their girl children, and discourage the widespread practice of
aborting the female foetus which has led to a skewed gender balance in parts of
the country.
Many
families prefer boys, as future breadwinners, to girls, on whom dowries have to
be spent to find husbands.
According
to a study published in the British medical journal, the Lancet, about 10
million female foetuses may have been aborted in India over the last 20 years
-- after illegal sex determination tests.
The
government hopes a cash incentive will change that.
"We
will pay the money in stages and monitor how they are brought up," Women
and Child Development Minister Renuka Chowdhury told a news conference.
The
government will pay 15,500 rupees ($385) to poor families in phases, with a
lump sum of 100,000 rupees when the girl reaches the age of 18, provided she
meets criteria including education, immunisation and nutrition, and she is not married.
"We
will start the project shortly," Chowdhury said, adding that it would be
rolled out in seven states where girls face the most acute discrimination.
"We
think this will force the families to look upon the girl as an asset rather
than a liability and will certainly help us save the girl child."
India
has already implemented a number of schemes for women to encourage the social
and economic empowerment of women, but Chowdhury said she was confident that
the new cash-driven policy would work better.
According
to the 2001 census, the national sex ratio is 933 females to 1,000 males.
($=40.3 Indian rupees) (Reporting by Bappa Majumdar; Editing by Krittivas
Mukherjee and Sanjeev Miglani)
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