The Hindu Business Line : Slaughter in the womb

Foeticide is the choice weapon in the gruesome killing of the `unwanted' girl child. Alarmingly, urban, prosperous India seems to hate its daughters more than rural areas.

In a bizarre coincidence, returning from a media sensitisation workshop in Goa last week on sex selection and female foeticide, one saw a Mid Day report on a pair of newborn twins abandoned outside Mumbai's JJ hospital. Of course they were girls.

What made the article more chilling was the juxtaposition of another report, on the same page, of two women in Mumbai fighting over a five-day-old baby. Needless to say this was a boy. One woman claimed she had found it abandoned on her doorstep; the other claimed it had been stolen.

At the conference organised by the Centre for Advocacy Research and Centre for Women's Development Studies (CWDS), women activists, census officials, NGO representatives and obstetricians painted a grim picture of the barbaric and systematic manner in which female foetuses were being slaughtered in the womb through sex selection diagnosis. This is clearly reflected in the Census 2001 data where the child sex ratio (0-6 years) has fallen from 945 girls to 1,000 boys in 1991 to 927 girls in 2001. In 1981 it was 962:1,000. A dissection of the data is more shocking... urban India — particularly its affluent pockets like Delhi or Ahmedabad and communities like Sikhs or Jains — hates its daughters much more than rural India. In 2001, against 934 girls (to 1,000 boys) in rural India, urban India had only 906 girls. That the gap is widening and the heinous practice of female foeticide is picking up steam can be seen from a gap of only 13 points in 1991 (948 girls in rural India against 935 in urban India) increasing to 28 points (934 against 906) in 2001.

Even more depressing, the child sex ratio in prosperous States like Punjab, Haryana, Gujarat and Delhi has fallen below 900; and in some districts, like Fatehgarh Sahib (Punjab) it is 754:1000 with both Patiala and Kurukshetra (Haryana) having only 770 girls. Ahmedabad (814) and South West Delhi (845) are not far behind.

In Punjab the figure has come down to a shocking 793 girls (875 in 1991); in Haryana 820 (879); in Gujarat 878 (928); in Delhi 865 (915); in Himachal Pradesh 897 (951) and in Rajasthan 909 (916). In many States the fall in the child sex ratio has been over 50 points.

Juxtapose these figures with the world average of 990 girls to 1,000 boys and you realise why this is a more worrying factor than our galloping population. Experts are convinced that the alarming fall in the sex ratio is linked to the proliferation of scan centres in urban and rural areas.

Says CWDS's Sabu George, who has been carrying on a relentless campaign against female infanticide and female foeticide for over a decade now, "Even in sandalwood smuggler Veerappan's extremely remote villages, known for their high instance of female infanticide, today you find ultrasound machines. Mettur town (in Salem district of Tamil Nadu) has a few and even in the Chambal valley ravines or the remote tribal areas of Rajasthan you'll find mobile clinics offering sex determination tests."

He lays the blame squarely on unethical and greedy doctors, "who are supposed to save lives", for promoting female foeticide in gross violation of the PNDT (Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques — Regulation and Prevention of Misuse) Act, 1994, which was made more stringent in 2001 following a writ petition filed by him and a couple of NGOs. He warns that unless drastic action is taken, "we're talking of sex ratios around 500 to 600 in some pockets of the country. In some pockets of Tamil Nadu the child sex ratio is already around 700."

Women activists at the Goa conference agonised over such a possibility and the disastrous consequences it would bring. "It would be nothing short of anarchy", said one woman. Satish Agnihotri, Secretary, Women and Child Development, Orissa, said evidence showed that "prosperous India is treating its daughters more harshly and killing them before birth. As the per capita expenditure or prosperity goes up, the sex ratio declines. But though this is the epicentre of this malaise, rural India is catching up."

On an average 105 boys are born for every 100 girls, but as the female infant is biologically sturdier this disadvantage should be negated gradually. "But through human intervention we have reversed this advantage and made the foetal stage the most dangerous in a woman's life," he said, drawing attention to the preposterous claim in northern States like Punjab and Haryana with distorted sex ratios that "as these mothers eat wheat (against rice in the south) they will give birth to boys and more boys!"

Abha Bhaiya from Jagori struck a reflective note when she said, "We're talking of modern technology and selective abortion of the girl child, but simultaneously there's an industry of traditional technology that keeps killing girls with neglect and more gruesome methods like suffocating them with pillows, poisonous juice, or starving them to death. After all, everyone does not have access to technology."

You could have heard a pin drop in that hall when she quoted a UP village woman asking: "Hamse zabardasti kaun nahi karta?" (Is there anybody who does not torment us?) The mother-in-law wants sons, husband demands sex, if husband dies father-in-law and brothers-in-law demand sex. Is a woman expected to perform according to the demands of the family, husband or society?"

On the steep fall in sex ratios in the cities, Abha said, "The criminals are within us; we can't blame the poor, ignorant and illiterate, and the declining sex ratio is part of the continuing violence against women. The home has become the most dangerous location for women; that's where she's not allowed to be born, is beaten up, burnt or sexually violated. We are a woman-hating society; bringing up daughters today is an expensive business, and women have become permanent refugees in the institution of marriage."

She related the heart-rending story of a Rajasthani woman who was chided by her brother for taking her sick daughter to a doctor and spending Rs 37 on medicines. He told her, "Itna paisa dawai me kharchney ki kya zaroorat thi... isme tau iski kriya ho jati." (Why did you spend so much money on medicine; it would have been enough for her last rites.) That's the attitude, that's the bottomline."

At another workshop in a remote village in Rajasthan, a woman who had come with her 8-month-old son and 3-year-old daughter suddenly found the son ill, with high fever. "The boy was struggling to breathe, it was a remote village where there were no medical facilities and she pointed to the daughter and said: I wish this had happened to her."

Anyway, the boy was shifted to a hospital the next day and got well. "Later when I told her I was disturbed by her comment, she said: `Look, if my daughter had died, I would have still been allowed to go back home. But if my son, born after four daughters, had died, there was no way I could return home. I would've had to commit suicide, there was no way the family would have accepted me, because this is a priced son.' No mother likes to kill her child, but this is the way women have to live; their pain is determined by other forces; they cannot decide when to mourn, whose death to mourn and how to mourn. These are the realities on the ground."

Dr Puneet Bedi, Obstetrician, Apollo Hospital, Delhi, described ultrasound machines as the latest WMD and said the obstetricians peddling scan technology for sex selection had become famous — and prosperous — by getting the title of ladkawala doctors, and added acidly, "In the eternal search for the perfect male baby, we're not far away from a time when we'll have designer babies, with blue eyes, blond hair, etc."

Coming to the regulation of ultrasound clinics and enforcement of the PNDT Act, which permits prenatal diagnostic scans solely to detect genetic abnormalities in the foetus, Arvind Kumar, Collector of Hyderabad, outlined the drive he had made in Hyderabad, and Khamman (in his earlier posting), to enforce the law which made it obligatory for sonologists to keep all the details of the scans they did. There was a lot of underreporting of the number of scans and most doctors did not furnish proper details. So 56 notices were issued in Hyderabad, giving time till December 15 for reply. "The Act is so powerful that if we decide to take action, we can pin down the offending doctors," he said, adding that at a meeting on sex selection, Andhra Chief Minister Rajasekhar Reddy, "who lives with his daughter, said daughters are gracious and more caring."

NGOs and women activists pointed out how difficult it is to corner and prosecute doctors who do sex selection tests, giving the results in coded language, with Plus for a boy and Minus for a girl, or `Jai Shri Ram' and `Jai Ambe Mata.' Also, in many places the appropriate authority, to which violations in the PNDT Act have to be reported, is hand in glove with the offending doctors. Said a frustrated Varsha Deshpande, an advocate running an NGO in Maharashtra, "But we've found that doctors are a scared lot... you just have to put 5 or 6 behind bars, aur baki sab thandey ho jayengey! (The remaining will fall in line).

Donna Fernandes, from Vimochna, an NGO in Karnataka, pointed out the phenomenon of shortage of girls in certain communities where sex selective abortion was rampant, and said that girls are "sold from Raichur to some families in the Jadeja community where there is a shortage of young women. Each girl is sold for Rs 30,000 and used as a sexual slave by the male members in the family; she is locked up and also used as bonded labour for domestic chores."

Referring to the MTP (medical termination of pregnancy) Act allowing abortion of a disabled foetus, she said, "Because we've said that a disabled child can be eliminated, today a girl child has become a disabled child. Tomorrow we'll say only a certain community will have the privilege to deliver children; all the others will be slaughtered in the womb."

Response can be sent to rasheeda@thehindu.co.in

Picture by A. Shaikmohideen

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