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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Foeticide belt finds names for unwanted by Satish Nandgaonkar

Foeticide belt finds names for unwanted by Satish Nandgaonkar

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published Published on Oct 14, 2011   modified Modified on Oct 14, 2011

In one little patch of Maharashtra, a lot, it seems, lies in a name.

About 175 girls whose names mean “unwanted” in Marathi will be re-christened in a public ceremony next week in a novel initiative to fight female foeticide.

The Satara zilla parishad in west Maharashtra has found in a survey of the district that parents with many girl children often name them Nakusa, Nakoshi or Nakushi, all meaning “unwanted” or “unwelcome”.

“On October 21, we will rename about 175 girls with Nakusa names and give them a new identity,” said Bhagwan Pawar, the district health officer whose brainchild the initiative is.

“Before the ceremony, our officers will visit their homes and allow them to select names of their choice. Quite naturally, girls are selecting names of their favourite personalities like Aishwarya Rai, Kareena Kapoor and Sakshi Tanwar.”

When Pawar and his team in the health department did the survey, they found that instances of girls being named “unwanted” were most in poor and less educated families having several female children in a row.

“We found families with six girls, and the last one was named Nakusa or Nakoshi. The trend was seen in economically better families also, but it was less compared to poorer families. The families surveyed said they did not ill-treat such children, but simply named them in this manner,” Pawar said.

The survey found that 222 girls across nine tehsils in Satara district had such names, with Patan tehsil topping with 92. There were 53 in Maan, 12 in Mahabaleshwar and 11 each in Satara, Khandala, Phaltan, and Khatav. Chief minister Prithviraj Chavan’s constituency, Karad, had 16.

The officials then decided to change the girls’ names to spread awareness about the problem. The renaming ceremony will be held at Swaraj Mangal Karyalaya hall in Satara city.

Pawar said the girls would be presented certificates with their new names at the ceremony “We can’t do much about their past. But we hope the new identity will erase the embarrassment of being named Nakusa or Nakoshi and give them a positive outlook towards their future,” he told The Telegraph.

The girls’ new names will be registered and published in the state gazette. Their schools will be notified and asked to ensure all future records carry their new names.

Supriya Sule, the Baramati MP and Sharad Pawar’s daughter, will be the chief guest at the ceremony. In August, Sule had gone on a four-day padayatra from Naigaon — the birthplace of social reformer Jyotiba Phule’s wife Savitribai — in Satara district to Pune to increase awareness about female foeticide.

State health minister Fauziya Khan, Satara’s guardian minister Ramraje Naik Nimbalkar and Satara collector Ramaswamy N. are also likely to be present.

According to census figures, Maharashtra’s sex ratio fell from 934 females per 1,000 males in 1991 to 922 in 2001 and improved marginally to 925 in 2011. But the child sex ratio (0-6 years) showed a sharp drop from 946 in 1991 to 913 in 2001 and 883 in 2011.

The 2001 census, which recorded a child sex ratio of 878 in Satara, showed marginal improvement in 2011. “Satara’s child sex ratio in the 0-6 years age group stood at 881. This is the initiative of the Satara zilla parishad. We have conducted such surveys on a smaller scale,” Satara collector Ramaswamy said.

Satara is among only four districts in Maharashtra that showed an improvement in the child sex ratio in the 2011 census. The others are Kolhapur, Sangli and Chandrapur.

The sharpest drop was recorded in BJP leader Gopinath Munde’s home district of Beed and in Jalna in the Marathawada region, where it respectively fell from 894 to 801 and 890 to 829 between 2001 and 2011.

The Telegraph, 14 October, 2011, http://www.telegraphindia.com/1111015/jsp/frontpage/story_14626679.jsp


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