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Indian campaign confronts fear of baby girls
The Guardian - July 15, 2012
"Yet another incident of apathy towards the girl child," said the Deccan Herald.
Call it apathy, call it attempted murder. The fact is, said Zaheer Abbas, "most Indians are preoccupied with trying to eat two meals a day" – and not fretting about how the country's sex ratio has become the worst since independence in 1947.
Abbas, editor-in-chief of the Udaipur Times, last year tried to jolt his readers into action by printing a picture of a three-month-old female foetus found in a sewerage canal.
"But look," he said, scrolling down his computer screen to below the article. "One comment. Just one. We want people to be angry about this. But they don't want to be seen by their parents and friends talking about such an issue."
Female foeticide has shot to prominence largely thanks to Satyamev Jayate, a popular campaigning TV show fronted by the Bollywood megastar Aamir Khan.
One episode was dedicated to the widespread practice of aborting female foetuses, particularly in the state of Rajasthan, which has one of the worst sex ratios in the country, having dropped to 883 girls per 1000 boys in 2011, from 909 in 2001.
Within days of the program airing, Rajasthan's government sprang officials vowed to set up fast-track courts to punish those who practise sex-based abortion. They also cancelled the licences of six sonography centres and issued notices to 24 others for their suspected involvement in female foeticide.
A drive is also under way to install trackers at all sonography centres in the state within four months, which will allow inspectors to check how many female foetuses make it to birth and beyond. These clinics are the battleground for campaigners fighting against sex selective abortion.
Dr Arvinder Singh is the Mr Big of antenatal scanning in Udaipur. The calm waters and Rajput palaces of this pretty lakeside city hide a murky secret: Udaipur is one of the Rajasthan districts that "lost" girls between the 2001 and 2011 censuses. There are now just 920 girls per 1000 boys; 28 fewer than 10 years ago.
Every day his clinic carries out about 50 antenatal scans. Last week Dr Singh said that not one of his patients in the past six months had asked the sex of their unborn child – it was now well known, he insisted, that to ask (or tell) was illegal.
But Manisha Bhathnagar, a local watchdog, said the state of Rajasthan plans to file a complaint against Dr Singh after undercover inspectors discovered that not all women at his clinic were filling out the compulsory form detailing how many children they have, what gender they are and who has referred them for a scan.
Pragnya Joshi, an academic expert on female foeticide, said the dowry culture was primarily to blame for the ever-worsening gender ratio. Though prohibited by law since 1961, dowry is ingrained in Indian culture, she said. A traditional Hindu wedding blessing was, "May God give you eight sons", she said.
It is not unusual for an unwanted baby girl to be given a horrible name, said Usha Choudhary, programme director of Vikalp ("Alternative"), an NGO. "I've met girls called Mafi, meaning sorry, and another called Dhapu, which translates as 'enough' – she was the fifth girl in her family," said Ms Choudhary.
As part of an effort to encourage villagers in Rajasthan to celebrate, rather than mourn, the birth of a girl, Vikalp carries out alternative naming ceremonies, giving babies names such as Khushi (Happy) or Pari (Angel).
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