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Reuters, December 06, 2002
Indian sex imbalance grows as
rich, poor want boys
By Penny MacRae
NEW DELHI, Dec 6 (Reuters) - Workers cleaning drains in a
northern Indian town recently discovered two aborted female
foetuses, a find that highlights the country's bias against
girls.
A few weeks later, a bag turned up in the same town of Alwar in
Rajasthan state containing a dozen female foetuses and dead baby
girls police believe was dumped by a nursing home.
The finds were stark evidence of the preference for boys over
girls among many parents that has skewed the sex ratio in this
country of more than a billion and been exploited by money-hungry
doctors using ultrasound machines to detect the sex of foetuses.
"It's an unholy alliance of tradition and technology.
Ultrasound was not meant for sex selection," said
demographer Ashish Bose. "It's a quick way for greedy
doctors to make money."
The result of the quest for sons was clear in the 2001 census.
From the ages of birth to six, there were 927 girls for 1,000
boys, down from 945 girls a decade earlier.
But that national figure masked big local variations. In northern
Punjab state, for instance, there were 793 girls for 1,000 boys,
down from 875 girls in 1991. The global ratio is about 1,005
females to 1,000 males.
India has had a long history of female infanticide -- of
girls poisoned, suffocated, drowned or left to die.
In the early 19th century, British colonel Alexander Walker
recorded his horror at seeing a mother drowning her newborn girl
in a trough of milk in the western Gujarat region.
But now abortion of female foetuses or "female
foeticide" has become common with the easy availability of
ultrasound sex tests.
While such tests, costing as little as 600 rupees ($12.42), are
illegal across India, the law is regularly flouted and clinics
offering sex tests abound. Portable ultrasound machines mean the
tests can be done even in remote areas.
"It's illegal but it's happening all over. It's available at
an affordable price," New Delhi social worker Mira Shiva of
the Voluntary Health Association told Reuters.
The yearning for a son is deep-rooted social phenomenon.
"A lot of it is economically based. If you have children
you're better off having boys because the sons will take care of
you in your old age," Bose said.
DAUGHTERS LEAVE HOME
Daughters, on the other hand, leave home when they wed and a
dowry -- that can range from $100 to a new car, jewellery,
apartment or more -- can prove crippling for a family.
Social activists say many who seek to find out the sex of their
unborn child are poor, rural and illiterate.
The prejudice against girls also stretches into urban centres
such as the capital, New Delhi, where the census showed about 850
girls per 1,000 boys in some affluent neighbourhoods.
"Often a woman who gives birth to a daughter gets treated
much worse than one who gives birth to a son," Shiva said.
"Some commit suicide they're so worried about how they'll be
treated by their husband's family. The family may be educated,
have money. This discrimination is across-the-board," she
said.
"Girls are seen as a burden and the fact educated women are
willing to abort their girls shows their social
conditioning."
Shiva says the government's push for two-child families to slow
population growth has only worsened the situation.
"With the small family norm, many people want boys so they
have abortions and keep trying when it's a girl," she said.
In neighbouring China where there is a similar traditional
preference for boys and a controversial one-child rule to keep
the population down, there is also a big sex imbalance.
Social workers in India say the trend will mean major social
problems ahead and make it harder for young men to wed.
"People won't be able to find girls to marry for their sons.
People in some places are already finding it hard. There will be
more prostitution, social instability, wife buying," Shiva
said.
The government, alarmed by the number of "missing
females," has introduced legislation to ban routine
ultrasounds on women below the age of 35 but the measure still
has to be passed.
In Alwar, to tackle the problem, municipal officials have
launched a poster drive with the message: "Killing a female
foetus is a sin for which no-one can atone."
Elsewhere, authorities have used other ways. In southern Tamil
Nadu state, for instance, authorities run a programme for parents
of unwanted girls to leave them in cradles outside hospitals.
At a public meeting in Salem in Tamil Nadu where officials say
female infanticide is common, the programme chief was shocked
when two mothers gave him their babies and showed no emotion.
"But then I realised this is a positive development,"
J. Radakrishnan told The Indian Express newspaper. "It shows
people are thinking twice about killing their baby girls."
($1-48.30 rupees)
BBC, Tuesday, 19 February, 2002, 17:11 GMT
India's gender 'holocaust'
warning
Families abort unborn girls after a simple scan
By Vir Singh in Badalia Ala Singh village, Punjab
The lush green fields around the village of Badalia Ala Singh are
living proof of Punjab's status as India's granary.
Yet amid this plenty, there is an alarming shortage of girls.
Girls are viewed as a burden in this community of farmers, where
in the past some families would ask village midwives to kill a
newborn baby if it turned out to be a female.
Now, thanks to ultrasound technology, they do not have to wait so
long.
A simple scan can reveal the sex of an unborn baby, and if is a
girl, the family is likely to force the mother to undergo an
abortion.
Test ban
"We are heading towards the greatest holocaust of
unborn girls in human history," said Sabu George, a
campaigner for the rights of girls.
Campaigners say that attitudes to girls will not change
overnight.
Sex determination tests were banned in 1994, but they continue to
be performed and they are blamed for a dramatic drop in the
number of girls.
According to India's 2001 census, nationally there are 927 girls
for every 1000 boys up to the age of six, down from 945 in 1991.
Affluent states in the north and west, where ultrasound clinics
first sprang up, have the lowest figures.
Punjab is at the very bottom, with just 793 girls for every 1000
boys.
"As the shortage becomes more and more, you will find much,
much greater violence against surviving women", said Mr
George.
Social workers have found that more rapes and harrassment occur
in communities where boys greatly outnumber girls.
Also, young men are finding it increasingly difficult to find
brides.
Official apathy
Sex determination tests have intensified discrimination against
girls, especially in states like Punjab with greater spending
power.
But government officials have largely disregarded the ban.
Not a single person has been convicted in more than seven years
despite ample evidence of a flourishing illegal trade.
Now, Mr George and other campaigners have successfully petitioned
India's Supreme Court to get state governments to crack down on
lawbreakers.
Suppliers of ultrasound machines are required to submit a list of
buyers to a specially constituted authority.
State governments must register all machines and also report to
the monitoring body.
Offenders 'beware'
Punjab's director of health services for family welfare says the
court action has given his department the necessary impetus to
finally enforce the law against sex determination tests.
"Now the people who are undergoing this test or are
conducting this test, they will be in real trouble," said Dr
D P S Sandhu.
"We are educating the people, telling them that girls are
looking after the old people better than the boys," he
added.
"Now people are realising it and I think there will be a
change in the attitude. We have just started this campaign
vigorously¿so the result will come up after a year. You will
see."
A midwife in Badalia Ala Singh village, Satwant Kaur, said the
government should make prosecuting lawbreakers its top priority.
"Instead of spending money on seminars and public meetings,
the government should post a reward of Rs 5,000 for anyone who
helps to catch offenders. This is the only way to stop this
illegal practice," she said.
Greedy doctors
S K Chaudhry, who heads a girls school in the nearby town of
Sarhand, agrees.
"People in this rural area don't think about the long term,
about the impact on society," she said.
"But doctors are educated. They know this is a bad thing. So
we have to implement the law by raiding clinics."
It may take several months, even years, to judge the
effectiveness of official measures against testing.
Campaigners like Mr George accept that laws alone cannot change
long held beliefs overnight.
But he said the enforcement measures ordered by India's highest
court are needed to end the "open promotion" of sex
determination tests by greedy doctors.
By implementing the ban, "the government is sending a
certain message to the social, moral and legal undesirability of
foeticide."
The hope is that if the government leads the way, communities
like this one in Punjab will follow.
BBC, Tuesday, 11 July, 2000, 15:55 GMT
16:55 UK
India's unwanted girls
Poverty and social pressure are said to be responsible
for the problem
By Jyotsna Singh in Delhi
The methods adopted to kill unwanted
children in India are often cold-blooded and cruel.
The ritual is performed by a family member or a professional
killer, by swaddling a new-born in a wet cloth or simply giving
her a spoonful of paddy grain with milk.
It simply cuts her tender throat, suffocating her to death.
At times, the mother is forced to hire a sweeper for a small sum
of 25 rupees (50 cents) to dispose of the child by simply
poisoning the baby with the latex of the calitropis plant, or
holding her so close to a table that she cannot breath.
The problem spreads across the country.
Health officials in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu have
identified three districts - Dharmapuri, Salem and Madurai - as
problem areas.
In Dharmapuri alone, close to 1,300 children are killed every
year, while Salem comes second with over 1,000 such killings.
Availability of sex determination tests like amniocentesis and
ultrasound seem to have increased the problem further.
Cruel death
Last week the body of a new-born girl child was exhumed from a
village in Paparapatti in the Dharmapuri district in the southern
Indian state of Tamil Nadu.
Authorities say they arrested the father of the child along with
another man, following complaints from the local villagers that
the two had killed the unwanted child.
An investigation into the case is continuing.
Dharmapuri tops the list of areas with the highest number of
cases of female infanticide and cases like these are not rare.
Reports say that the practice is widely prevalent in the
interiors of Tamil Nadu and is adversely affecting the sex ratio.
Government officials put the number of cases of female
infanticide in Tamil Nadu at 3,000 each year.
But they say there is very little evidence to allow direct
administrative action.
Getting data for female infanticide is even harder.
Medical termination of pregnancy is legal in India and it is
nearly impossible to ascertain whether the abortion followed an
ultrasound test to detect the sex of the foetus.
Decline of women
Activists working in the area say the practice of female
infanticide is particularly rampant among the Kallar community.
They say that the community valued its female population until
the early years of the 20th century.
However, after the green revolution brought agricultural
prosperity, men assumed greater role in the economic process and
women were made subservient.
Since the 1970's the female population began to decline.
Killing of female foetuses has only added to the problem though
selective abortion is a crime under the Indian law.
As part of its preventive measures the government has tried to
compulsorily register all pregnancies and follow them up.
But that is a daunting task for a village health nurse, who
sometimes has to cover a population of 5,000.
Activists and non-governmental organisations say a strong
campaign against the issue may be the only immediate answer.
BBC, Thursday, 4 May, 2000, 17:10 GMT 18:10
UK
Plea to save girl babies
Cultural traditions favouring boys over girls die hard
By Helen Sewell of the BBC science unit
Doctors in India are calling for international help to prevent
two million abortions they say are carried out each year because
the unborn babies are female.
Terminating a pregnancy purely because of the sex of a child is
illegal in India.
But many mothers want boys not girls, and the Indian Medical
Association says the law is almost impossible to uphold.
In some sections of Indian society, having daughters is less
acceptable than having sons.
Dr V Parameshvara, a former president of the Indian Medical
Association, says intrinsically women have a lower status in
India than men.
He says girls can bring economic and social burdens to a family,
and rather than bring
children into the world to be ill-treated by a patriarchal
society, expectant mothers prefer to abort their female babies.
The proportion of females to males in India has been going down
since the beginning of the 20th century, with up to 50m fewer
women in the population than expected.
In recent years, the ratio has dropped dramatically.
Dr Parameshvara says there has been a long-standing tradition in
some circles of killing girl babies just after birth.
But because technology now allows mothers to know the sex of
their child before it is born, terminations have become
widespread.
Dr Parameshvara claims that a law introduced specifically to
prevent abortions because of the sex of the unborn child is being
ignored throughout the country.
The Indian Medical Association is urging international colleagues
at the World Medical Association to support a campaign against
female feticide and female infanticide to rid India of what it
calls "this social evil".