The missing girls

People of my generation will remember this folk song. It was written and rendered by Pete Seeger in 1955 and sung again with added lyrics by Joan Baez in the 1960s. It was titled Where have all the flowers gone? Its second stanza runs:

Where have all the young girls gone?

Long time passing

Where have all the young girls gone?

Long time ago

Where have all the young girls gone?

When will they ever learn?

When will they ever learn?

I am the fourth girl child in my family. I am told that at my birth, the only one who was happy was my father. But there was no celebration in the household. In Kashmir, where father was posted, the birth of a fourth daughter was considered a sad event. Father's colleague, a woman who was highly educated, with a B. Ed from the UK in the 1930s, came home to condole with the family but was politely sent back by him. My mother's yearning for a male child made her go through several aborted pregnancies. But I do believe that no matter where it is in the world, a fourth daughter would evoke a similar reaction.

Being four sisters, we did not do too badly in life. I am talking of another era when patriarchy was an unknown concept. Today, the world has changed and the gender discourse is well-entrenched in daily life. Only one fact remains painfully constant: disdain for the girl child. This uncomfortable truth was driven home when the latest figure of India's Child Sex Ratio from the 2011 census was revealed. On a downward slide since 1961, the ratio fell over the last decade from 927 in the 2001 census to the all-time low of 914 in 2011 (a fall of 13 points).

What is worrying is that while many issues electrify the nation and people work themselves into frenzy over them, this one issue has had a minimal impact. A World Cup cricket tie between India and Pakistan made the country come to a standstill. Anna Hazare's fast-unto-death to fight corruption made the middle classes and urban elite throng to public places to challenge the apathy of the government. But a depleting ratio hardly creates a whimper; newspapers flash the numbers, analyse State-wise data, but no one bothers to start a movement. The numbers of girl children lost between the ages of one and six, especially in the better performing States and districts, tell a story of gross neglect and criminal indifference. The Capital's elite South Delhi region, for example, has a dismal sex ratio — only 762 girls for every 1,000 boys. One in every four girls gets aborted here. Among the States, Haryana leads the pack (at 830 girls per 1,000 boys in 2011), Maharashtra is complicit (from 913 in 2001, the number has dropped to 883 in 2011), and Jammu & Kashmir (from 941 in 2001 to 859 in 2011, a fall of 82 points) is right at the bottom.

Meanwhile, there are villages in Haryana, Rajasthan and Punjab that have not seen the birth of a girl in a long time. A 2007 study by the Indian Trust for Innovation and Social Change, titled ‘Infant Mortality and Maternal Mortality-Socio-Economic Causes and Determinants', sponsored by the Planning Commission, describes an incident at a Primary Health Centre (PHC) in the Rewari district of Haryana: “When the doctor and the midwife went out to wash their hands, in a matter of minutes, the newly-born healthy girl child was found dead. The mother of the child, after delivery-fatigue, was sleeping. No eye witness was there to complain. The case was not pursued. On questioning, the mother-in-law feigned ignorance of whatever happened.”

Grooms are waiting for brides who do not exist; they were disposed of before they turned six. Media reports say young (and not so young) men of Haryana are buying brides from Bihar, Orissa, and the North-East. Poor parents in starvation-hit pockets of many States are forced to sell their girls to save them from certain death. So the girl may land up in Jhajjar or Mewat, an unpaid slave who knows neither the language nor customs of her new marital home. Tragedy unfolds throughout her life, whether she lives in bondage or runs away to a fate that turns out to be no better than what she has left behind. The question of choice is purely hypothetical.

I come from Panipat (in Haryana), which today bears the ignominy of having among the worst Child Sex Ratio in the country. In this amazing town, which used to be famous for its Sufi culture and has the shrine of Qalandar Sahib, women used to be greatly revered. Houses were named after the ladies of the establishment. Men usually went outside the qasba for employment and the women looked after agricultural land. Women and men of Panipat were equally known all over the country for their expertise in Quirat , or the recitation of the Quran . Due to all these factors women were held in great esteem. This is reflected in the poetry of the Poet Laureate, reformist and feminist, Panipat-born Maulana Altaf Husain Hali. His poems extolled the woman, not for her beauty but for her quality to hold up more than half the world. His famous lines, women's anthem, are:

Ai maon, behnon, betiyon duniya ki zeenat tumse hai

Mulkon ki basti ho tumhin, qaumom ki izaat tumse hai

(O Sisters, mothers, daughters, You are the ornaments of the world, You are the life of the nations, The dignity of civilisations).

Hali wrote this poem over 100 years ago; he died in 1914. How far have we regressed? We talk about development in all its avatars but what will it be worth if there continue to be over 60 million missing women and girls in India? Think about it; it is time to launch a mass movement to save the girl child with the same universal concern we have seen recently on the issue of corruption. Without women, let's face it, there is no life. As the poet said:

Hum hi jab na honge to kya rang-e-mehfil?

(Without us, life loses all its colour!)

© Women's Feature Service

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