Saving the girl child  

The recent recovery of 400 foetal bones from behind a hospital in Ratlam should be an eye opener for the policy makers to take urgent steps to arrest the rising incidence of female foeticide and infanticide in the country. 

A recent UNICEF report paints an alarming picture. It says 7000 fewer girls are born in the country every day than the global average. Another survey points out that one out of every 25 female foetuses -about 50,000 a year is aborted in India . Government figures released by the Ministry for Women and Child Development too point to the need that a lot more should be done before it is too late. According to the ministry, over a crore female foetuses have been destroyed in India over the past two decades. Capital Delhi itself has the dubious distinction of having the worst sex ratio at 821 as against the national ratio 933 females to 1000 males as per the 2001 census. 

While in the rest of the world, women outnumber men by three to five per cent, in India there are seven per cent more men than women and the number of females continues to decline. 

Studies show that neither education nor affluence has brought any significant change in the attitudes towards women in the country. In fact, the increase in the deficit of voting girls noticed in the 1981, 1991 and 2001 censuses was indicative of a strong possibility that the traditional methods of neglect of female children were being increasingly replaced by not allowing female children to be born, a recent book, "Sex-selective Abortion in India . Gender, Society and New Reproductive Technologies", noted.

Tulsi Patel, a. Professor in Sociology in Delhi School of Economics, who edited the book quoted the sex ratio figure, in 1921, of 972 women in India for every 1000 men and its decline to 933 in 2001 and questioned the relationship between social development and sex ratio. Internationally speaking, socially as well as economically advanced societies have shown a sex ratio favourable to the female, she noted. 

Since 1980s, India has witnessed a sharp decline in juvenile sex ratio in the age group of 0 to 6 years, Patel wrote. Is sex-selective abortion responsible for unfavourable female-male ratio? According to Lee-la Virasia Professor and Director of Gujarat Institute of Development Research, Ahmedabad, higher mortality of girls until recently was one factor responsible for adverse sex ratio. According to her, until 1980s, the life expectancy of women was lower by 2-3 years than that of men. It is only in the 1990s that the trend had begun to reverse. Virasia said that deficit of women in India 's population has been documented ever since the first decennial enumeration of people was conducted in the late 19th century. 

Over the span of more than 1, 00 years, the deficit has progressively increased as evident from the sex ratio of the population - the number of women in India steadily decline from 972 in 1901to 933 in 2001. India shares with China and other South Asian countries with the exception of Sri Lanka this phenomenon of deficit of women. 

In spite of the overall faster decline in mortality among women in India registered in the past two decades, the deficit of girls has progressively and dramatically increased in the last 20 years. Thus, compared to 1981 when there were 1.9 per cent fewer girls than boys, the percentage doubled to 3.8 by 2001. The States of Haryana and Punjab enumerated 10 to 11.6 per cent less girls than boys in 2001, respectively up from five percent in 1981. In absolute numbers, there were 23 million fewer women compared to men in 1981 but by 2001, the number increased to nearly 36 million. 

The menace of not only the dowry system but also of lifelong presents that have to be given to the girls from the day she marries, to her death and also to her children was a strong deterrent to having girls, the author says citing findings of a study of women from the upper castes that practiced dowry in Haryana and Gujarat.

Demographers note that foeticide is not approved or practiced for the first female foetus. It is a relief for the families that the mother and the baby are fine although if the first born were to be a son, the families are overjoyed. What changed in the past 50 years is the ability of parents to modulate the composition of their children especially with the introduction of sonography. Parents now do not consider worthwhile to have daughters until a son happens to arrive. 

Experts also note that the practice of elimination of female foetuses seemed more prevalent in the urban areas than in the rural areas, but the gap was fast decreasing because of easy availability of sex determination tests now in the rural areas. The new reproductive technology (NRT) is penetrating even in those areas where one does not get even safe drinking water or food, it says.

 They stress the need to examine population policies especially in relation to the NRT and cautions that the country otherwise faced the danger of widening up between girls and boys.  

(Source-Daily Excelsior Jammu , March 15, 2007)