According to a recent report of UNICEF 50 million unborn female babies killed in India. India’s already abysmal sex ratio figures are getting worse day by day, with 80 percent of its districts recorded declining child sex ratios since 1991, as thousands of girl children are killed before or at birth. According to UN children’s agency annual report ‘ State of Worlds’ Children 2007′ the state of Punjab is the worst offender as the ratio has dropped from 875 in 1991 to 798 girls for, every 1,000 boys in 2001. After Punjab, comes the number of Haryana which saw a drop of 60 points from 879 girls in 1991 to 817 in 2001. Himachal Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh and Uttaranchal are the other states where girl children are largely unwanted.
All this happening in India because deeply rooted norms in India devalue women. India is largely a feudal and patriarchal society, a fact that perpetuates their low status. In addition, in India if one has only daughters he will be reincarnated in a lower caste. Even though the caste system was abolished under british rule, and the dowry was banned in 1961 by law, both remain widely practiced Even the Hindu religion does not provide any security to this creature. The Hindu Holy text sanctify the killing of infant girls, by parents who deem themselves not capable of shouldering the responsibility of having a girl child. The Hindu holy book Bhagvad Gita calls women embodiment of the worst desires and justifies the killing of women. “Killing of a woman, a shudra or an atheist is not sinful. Woman is an embodiment of the worst desires, hatred, deceit, jealously and bad character. Women should never be given freedom”. Bhagvad Gita (Manu 1X. 17 and V.47, 147).The modern democratic India follows these religious teachings of hatred and enmity towards women. The change does come but only in the techniques of the violence. In past, in Hindu society new born girls were buried alive now new born baby girls are either strangled to death or aborted during pregnancy. According to a UNICEF report released in December 2006, about 7,000 fewer girls than expected are born daily in India, and about 10 million fewer girls than expected were born in the past 20 years due to sex discrimination. The most recent Indian census figures found that the gender ratio decreased from 947 girls per 1,000 boys to 927 girls per 1,000 boys from 1991 to 2001.
To perform ultrasounds and abortions for the purpose of sex-selection is widespread and shows no signs of slowing. The Lancet Study, British medical journal, seemed to confirm that laws were not deterring families from sex-selection. The study estimated that at least 500,000 female fetuses in 1997 were aborted. It mentioned the severity of situation in this way:” All kinds of famines, epidemics and war are nothing compared to this”. This practice is prevalent in all segments of society and wealthier populations are the worst offenders, since they can afford the cost of testing for gender identification. Punit Bedi, a New Delhi gynaecologist said, “In some parts of India, one of every five girls is being eliminated at the fetal stage”. She further told, “The number of girls killed over the past 20 years is going to change our society. These atrocities have left India without 10 million girls. We all are going to pay the price”.
Abortion was legal in India since 1971 as a way to control the country’s rapidly expanding population. Bedi said,” It was understood that all programmes [to control the population] were failing because people would not stop having children until they had at least two boys”. In 1994, under pressure from a coalition of activists, the Indian government changed course, outlawing the use of ultrasound machines to reveal fetus gender. Despite these laws this practice is gaining momentum. It is a very low risk, high-profile business. As the doctors not only make a lot of money but are absolutely sure that they will not be caught. In Jaipur, capital of Rajasthan, prenatal sex determination tests result in an estimated 3,500 abortions of female fetuses annually. Even the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh recognized the accelerating horror of female genocide in India. In response he has launched the “Save the Girl Child” campaign. He said no nation could claim to be part of a civilized world if it condoned female feticide. An estimated 50 million girls have been sacrificed because of son preference.
There are several reasons for the people to kill their daughters. Among them dowry is a main cause. One can not talk about marriage without discussing dowries. Thus, girls are expensive, with little rewards. In a country where 90% of the people live in poverty, wedding and dowries often require families to take out crushing loans. They would rather take out the loans than suffer loss of honour. So when a poor family already has two daughters, a third would be impossible to keep. The middle class can afford these weddings, but often choose not to have many daughters. If a woman gives birth to daughters, she has yet to succeed as a wife and a mother. Some mother-in-laws even beat or at least verbally abuse their daughter- in-laws for not producing a son.
Secondly, for Hindus, a son is required to light the funeral pyre of his parents and send their souls to heaven. Discrimination in the religion can not allow a daughter to do this. John-Thor Dahlburg of the Los Angeles Times points out that in rural India, the centuries-old practice of female infanticide can still be considered a wise course of action.
The bias against the females in India is related to the fact that sons are called upon to provide the income; they are the ones who do most of work in the fields. In this way sons are looked to as a type of insurance. With this perspective, it becomes clearer that the high value given to males decreases the value given to females.
The cultural preference for boys leads to further neglect of girls who do survive to birth. These girls suffer from lack of access to nutrition, health and maternal care in the critical early years. In Rajasthan and Utter Pradesh [states], it is usual for girls and women to eat less than men and boys and to have their meal after the men and boys have finished eating. Murders of women whose families are deemed to have paid insufficient dowry have become increasingly common. So the girls who survive birth are died afterwards.
Nobody question the very norms that make girls so vulnerable in India in the first place. Either girls are married off like a burden or get rid of before birth. The gender based crimes have severely skewed sex ratio across the country and made the practice of purchasing brides, sex slavery and polyandry common in several villages in North India.
The Indian government plans to set up orphanages in each regional district for female infants in an effort to curb sex-selective abortions. Now the question is what will be the fate of this strategy? Will it be a failure like the laws, which the Indian government promulgated to eradicate this evil? However, women right activists are of opinion that the government’s new proposal of girl orphanages is absurd. They said most of the girls are killed before birth, not after birth, so where is the option of abandoning girls if they are not born at all. As long as baby girls are not seen as valuable, selective abortion and female infanticide will continue.
How can India ever justify its claim of being largest democracy and claim a position in the UNSC when the basic human rights factor is jeopardized to such level. It is most important to note that in the social indicators of literacy, poverty, basic health and human rights factor India lags behind even her smallest neighbours in South Asia. There is a need that Indian government should take urgent measures to create awareness through education on the need to end female infanticide.
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