WUNRN
Women's Feature Service
The Mahesh Ashram in Rajasthan'sUdaipur, has been saving
newborn girls. This cradle home has 19 abandoned baby girls
who are getting
quality professional care. (Credit: Renu Rakesh\WFS)
By Renu Rakesh
Udaipur (Women’s
Feature Service) – Post the eye-opening first episode of Aamir Khan's chat
show, 'Satyamev Jayate', which brought the reality of sex selective abortions
to national television, various state governments as well as civil society
organisations have been stirred into action. But long before it became the
cause of the season, an initiative in Rajasthan's tourist haven,
In August 2006,
within a period of two weeks, two female foetuses were reported to be found
floating in the city’s famed
An inquiry into
Rajasthan’s child sex ratio revealed that there were only 909 girls in the 0-6
age group for every 1,000 boys in the state, according to the 2001 Census.
Unfortunately, this number has only declined over the last decade – the 2011
census reports just 883 girls for 1,000 boys.
Why do Rajasthanis
reject daughters? Where have all those missing girls gone? What can be done to
turn this dismal situation around? Devendra Agarwal, 38, had no answers to
these questions that were troubling him. But one thing was clear in his mind:
He had to do something to rescue such girls.
Recalls this
once-successful marketing professional, “I was moved by the visuals of foetuses
floating on the water. I thought if someone could take care of the unwanted
girls, they would neither be killed nor abandoned or dumped in hedges and
dustbins.”
Agarwal started by
putting up a cradle outside his home in the city’s busy Surajpole area. Within
a week, he had three baby girls in his home. He smiles, “We were looking for
one sister for my two sons, and suddenly we had three.”
These three girls
gave a new direction to Agarwal’s life plans. When the Udaipur’s Child Welfare
Committee (CWC) came to know that he had abandoned newborns in his home it
decided to take them away, saying that they needed to be put up for adoption.
When he tried to stop them, legal hassles followed. “I fought the case right up
to the Supreme Court where, too, I lost. I couldn’t save these girls. In the
meantime, I was charged with contempt by the Rajasthan High Court and arrest
warrants were issued against me twice,” he recalls.
Those were tough
times for him and his family but that’s when he decided that saving newborn
girls was going to be his new calling. Agarwal instituted an organisation, the
Maa Bhagwati Vikas Sansthan, under which the Mahesh Ashram was set up. Built
with a loan of Rs 23 lakh, this home based in
Says Agarwal, “I
realise that a lot of women are compelled to give up their daughter because of
family and social pressures. In fact, many a time, the mother is not even aware
that the girl she gave birth to has been taken away from the hospital bed and
dumped. We want to save such lives. All we say is: ‘Don’t throw them, give them
to us’.”
To make that happen,
the Mahesh Ashram has put up two cradles – one outside the busy MB Hospital and
the other at the ashram’s doorstep. An alarm sounds after two minutes of a
child being placed in the cradle, giving ample time for the mother or any other
family member to leave.
In the five years
this ashram has been functional Agarwal and his team have been able to save 67
girls. “Unfortunately, we lost six girls, who were very sick when we found
them. One of them was thrown from a running car. She was bleeding profusely
when my team found her. We rushed her to the hospital, where three units of
blood were given, but she couldn’t survive. Another one was left under a
running tap in a hospital’s bathroom on a cold winter night. She was on a
ventilator for nine hours before she succumbed,” he recounts with sadness.
To give the
particularly vulnerable children the best of healthcare, the Mahesh Ashram has
acquired photo-therapy machines, warmers and oxygenators besides a dedicated
staff of 20 ‘ayahs’ (local nurses) and one general nurse and midwife (GNM).
“Now, we are gearing up to start a neonatal care unit at the ashram itself so
that complete care can be provided within its premises. The construction of
this unit is in full swing at the moment,” informs Agarwal.
Of course, saving the
little ones is not Agarwal’s only mission. The Mahesh Ashram has also taken on
the responsibility of finding loving, stable homes for them. Says Agarwal, “I
failed in my first attempt – with the three girls – because I had no knowledge
of what the law said regarding the adoption of abandoned babies. But once we
started the ashram we are more organised in our approach.” He formed a
childcare committee, comprising senior government officials – an IPS officer,
an IRS officer, the vice-vhancellor of a university, a chartered accountant and
Agarwal himself on the board – to conduct the ashram’s adoption-related activities.
In fact, in 2009,
Mahesh Ashram became a specialised adoption agency (SAA) after getting a
licence from the Social Justice and Empowerment Department (SJED) of the
Government of Rajasthan. To date, they
have found parents for 41 babies, although Agarwal admits that it’s not easy to
find homes for them because people in the state are still fixated on boys. “It
takes us a lot of time to ensure a stable life for these girls. Even now, we
have 30 applications pending for adoption, but all of them are for a male child
and, sadly, our search for suitable parents for 17 beautiful girls continues.
Of course, one has to point out here that when couples do come forward to adopt
girls they do so unconditionally. In fact, those who come looking to adopt boys
are more choosy – most often they want ‘fair, good-looking’ kids,” he says.
Commenting on actor
Aamir Khan’s much publicised move to save the girl child, he says, "It's
really ironical that at the time when Khan was holding a meeting with Rajasthan
Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, a girl was abandoned in our ashram's cradle."
Whether it’s a call
on national television to save India’s girl children or an individual’s efforts
– like that of Agarwal and his Mahesh Ashram – the fact is that there is no
hope for India’s abandoned girl children unless everybody, including those in
the medical profession, work towards making change happen.