POPULATION-INDIA: Shame of Female Foeticide Remains Hard to Stop

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Oct 20 2003 (IPS) - Indian tennis sensation Saniya Mirza is not content with Wimbledon titles, but is keen on serving as a powerful deterrent to parents who seek an abortion upon discovering that their unborn child is female.

”I see myself as a living example that Indian girls can do wonders – if allowed to live,” Mirza, 16, said at the release Monday of a 20-page booklet titled ”Mapping the Adverse Sex Ratio in India” produced by United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) , the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and the Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner. Mirza, who shot to fame earlier this year by claiming the junior women’s doubles title at Wimbledon alongside Russian Alisa Kleybanova, confessed to being unaware of India’s declining sex ratio, brought out graphically by the booklet.

”I was shocked to learn of the new low that the sex ratio has touched. I was fortunate that my parents never made either me or my sister ever feel that there was a need for a boy child in the family,” she said.

That, however, is not the prevailing sentiment in many middle-class Indian families which, trapped between the traditional bias toward male offspring and the modern need to limit family size, end up aborting female foetuses after getting illegal sex-determination tests.

The Pre-conception and Pre-natal Diagnostics Techniques (Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act came into force on Feb. 14 this year, but many believe that doctors and private clinics remain ready to disclose the sex of an unborn child in return for a fat fee.

Said Prasanna Kumar Hota, secretary for family welfare: ”Adverse sex ratios are now a real challenge to the very foundations of our society and it is a matter of great shame that doctors should be collaborating in this perversion.”

Ultrasound machines, a common diagnostic tool useful in detecting genetic abnormalities, readily reveal the sex of the unborn foetus and doctors have devised ingenious ways to discreetly disclose results without compromising themselves in the eyes of the law.

According to Ashis Bose, one of India’s best-known demographers, doctors in northern Haryana and Punjab states, which are the worst affected by the epidemic of female foeticide, normally present parents with a ‘laddoo’ (a large round sweet) to indicate a male and a ‘burfi’ (flattened sweet) if otherwise.

Hota said darkly that it was time to think of ”draconian measures”, including capital punishment, for doctors found guilty of aiding or abetting female foeticide.

At present, anyone who seeks help for sex selection can face, at first conviction, imprisonment for a three-year period while the medical practitioner can, if convicted, be debarred by the state-level medical council.

According to the UNFPA booklet, India’s child sex ratio – the number of girls per 1,000 boys in 0-6 years of age group – declined from 945 per 1,000 in the 1991 census to 927 per 1,000 in the 2001 census in a downward trend continuing since 1961.

”A stage may soon come when it would become extremely difficult, if not impossible, to make up for the missing girls,” the booklet said, reiterating tersely what demographers like Bose have been warning about for years now.

Zooming into the district level, the booklet turns up shocking figures in the decline of the child sex ratio in some districts of Haryana, such as Kurukshetra, to 770 girls per thousand boys.

Haryana has already begun experiencing a serious shortage of marriageable girls, although this is not matched by any increase in the status of women.

Thus there have, of late, been reports of women being ‘imported’ into Haryana state as ‘brides’ from states as distant as Orissa on the eastern coast, only to end up being treated like slaves and even chained to prevent them from trying to escape a life of drudgery, hard farm labour and abuse.

Noted Francois M Farah, UNFPA country representative: ”In India the preference for sons is influenced by many socio-economic and cultural factors, such as the son being responsible for carrying forward the family name and occupation.”

Sons, he said, are also desired because they are considered a source of support during old age and for performing Hindu religious rites at the time of cremation, for instance.

Farah also noted that the practices of dowry and daughters being viewed as ‘parayadhan’ (somebody else’s property) are among the reasons why sons are preferred over daughters.

Sushma Swaraj, union minister for health and family welfare and a native of Haryana, said it was time that religious leaders take a hand in checking female foeticide.

”In India young girls are on the one hand ritually worshipped as the manifestation of ‘devis’ (goddesses) and on the other discriminated against at every turn,” Swaraj said. ”These days they are not even allowed to be born.”

But she also pointed out that female foeticide is partly the result of a drive to limit the country’s burgeoning population, which crossed the billion mark in March 2001. ”We need new slogans that say ‘Limit the Population’ but Save our Daughters’,” she said.

In an attempt to strike a balance between population control and curbing female foeticide, Haryana’s Chief Minister Om Prakash Chautala announced, last week, a new family planning scheme under which couples get paid 10 U.S. dollars a month to support one female child and half that amount to support a male child if they opt for sterilisation afterwards. The UNDP booklet simplified the picture for ordinary people by graphically marking the areas of the country where the sex ratio has dropped below the 800 mark in bright red. Other areas are progressively marked brown, yellow, light green and finally dark green to indicate more favourable ratios.

”As you can see, the areas where the sex ratio is getting adverse have been spreading like cancer between 1991 and 2001,” Hota said in making a brief presentation.

Said Swaraj: ”I find the use of the colour red appropriate – it represents the blood of our daughters.”