WUNRN
23 May 2011
INDIA - FEMALE FOETICIDE - PREFERENCE FOR BOYS - DATA
Kulwant has three daughters aged 24, 23 and 20 and a son who is 16. In the years between the birth of her third daughter and her son, Kulwant became pregnant three times. My mother-in-law said if I had a daughter, my husband would leave me. Thankfully, I had a son.”
Each
time, she says, she was forced to abort the foetus by her family after ultrasound
tests confirmed that they were girls.
"My mother-in-law taunted me for giving birth to girls. She said her son would divorce me if I didn't bear a son."
Kulwant still has vivid memories of the first abortion. "The baby was nearly five months old. She was beautiful. I miss her, and the others we killed," she says, breaking down, wiping away her tears.
Until her son was born, Kulwant's daily life consisted of beatings and abuse from her husband, mother-in-law and brother-in-law.
Once, she says, they even attempted to set her on fire.
"They were angry. They didn't want
girls in the family. They wanted boys so they could get fat dowries," she
says.
Kulwant's husband died three years after
the birth of their son. "It was the curse of the daughters we killed.
That's why he died so young," she says.
How
girls are valued varies widely across
In the matrilineal societies of Kerala
and Karnataka in the south and Meghalaya in the north-east, women have enjoyed
high status and commanded respect. But the latest census figures show the good
news even in these areas could be turning bad. A minor decline in the number of
girls has begun in the three states which, campaigners worry, might be
indicative of a trend.
What is seen as most distressing is the
steep decline in the number of girls under seven in the southern state of
Andhra Pradesh and in
But all is not lost. Some states, such as
Her
neighbour Rekha is mother of a chubby three-year-old girl.
Last September, when she became pregnant again, her mother-in-law forced her to undergo an abortion after an ultrasound showed that she was pregnant with twin girls.
"I said there's no difference between girls and boys. But here they think differently. There's no happiness when a girl is born. They say the son will carry forward our lineage, but the daughter will get married and go off to another family."
Kulwant and Rekha live in Sagarpur, a
lower middle-class area in south-west
Here, narrow minds live in homes separated
by narrow lanes.
The women's story is common and repeated
in millions of homes across
In 1961, for every 1,000 boys under the age of seven, there were 976 girls. Today, the figure has dropped to a dismal 914 girls.
Although the number of women overall is
improving (due to factors such as life expectancy),
Many factors come into play to explain this: infanticide, abuse and neglect of girl children. But campaigners say the decline is largely due to the increased availability of antenatal sex screening, and they talk of a genocide.
The government has been forced to admit that its strategy has failed to put an end to female foeticide.
'National shame'
"Whatever measures have been put in over the past 40 years have not had any impact on the child sex ratio," Home Secretary GK Pillai said when the census report was released.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh described female foeticide and infanticide as a "national shame" and called for a "crusade" to save girl babies.
But
Campaigners say
Until 30 years ago, he says,
It said they no longer needed to produce endless children to have the right number of sons, and it encouraged the determination and elimination of female foetuses as an effective tool of population control.
"By late 80s, every newspaper in
"Clinics from
In 1994, the Pre-Natal Determination Test (PNDT) Act outlawed sex-selective abortion. In 2004, it was amended to include gender selection even at the pre-conception stage.
Abortion is generally legal up to 12 weeks' gestation. Sex can be determined by a scan from about 14 weeks.
"What is needed is a strict
implementation of the law," says Varsha Joshi, director of census
operations for
Today, there are 40,000 registered ultrasound clinics in the country, and many more exist without any record.
'Really sad'
Ms Joshi, a former district commissioner
of south-west
"It's really sad. We are the capital of the country and we have such a poor ratio," Ms Joshi says.
The south-west district shares its
boundary with
Since the last census,
"Something's really wrong here and something has to be done to put things right," Ms Joshi says.
Almost all the ultrasound clinics in the area have the mandatory board outside, proclaiming that they do not carry out illegal sex-determination tests.
But the women in Sagarpur say most people here know where to go when they need an ultrasound or an abortion.
They say anyone who wants to get a foetal
ultrasound done, gets it done. In the five-star clinics of south
Similarly, the costs vary for those
wanting an illegal abortion.
Ms Joshi says most offenders are members of the growing middle-class and affluent Indians - they are aware that the technology exists and have the means to pay to find out the sex of their baby and abort if they choose.
"We have to take effective steps to control the promotion of sex determination by the medical community. And file cases against doctors who do it," Mr George says.
"Otherwise by 2021, we are frightened to think what it will be like."