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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Heartland hoopla over ‘seven billionth baby’ by Tapas Chakraborty

Heartland hoopla over ‘seven billionth baby’ by Tapas Chakraborty

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published Published on Oct 30, 2011   modified Modified on Oct 30, 2011

A buzz that the world’s “seven billionth baby” will be born in Uttar Pradesh on Monday has prompted several NGOs to descend on villages of their choice near Lucknow and draw up plans to welcome some or other newborn that day with a generous dose of hoopla.

One primary health centre in western Uttar Pradesh has gone a step further and predicted the baby will be born to 25-year-old Pinky Pawar, wife of a shopkeeper in Sunhaida village near Meerut.

Celebrations with fireworks and sweets have already begun in the village, whose sudden fame is drawing crowds of visitors eager for a darshan of Pinky.

The health centre chief is giving TV interviews while the NGOs, such as Vatsalya and Pani which work for family welfare, have invited the media and celebs to their own bashes on Monday at the villages they have selected.

It all started when the United Nations recently declared that the world’s population would reach exactly 7 billion on October 31, although demographers say such calculations are always imprecise and can go wrong by up to six months in either direction.

The UN, of course, has clarified that it cannot pinpoint “the exact moment or exact place where that child will be born”, but this has not deterred the NGOs. They are pointing to some demographers’ conjecture that Uttar Pradesh is the likeliest site because of its high birth rate of 11 babies per minute.

The hype is probably inspired by the UN’s declaration of a newborn in Sarajevo as the world’s “sixth billion living person” on October 12, 1999.

That date and site are disputed — if Uttar Pradesh is the likeliest site now, it should have been so in 1999 too — but the UN clearly meant the event to be a symbolic show of support for a war-ravaged city.

The world body’s identification of October 31 for the seven-billion landmark is no less symbolic or disputed: for instance, the US Census Bureau believes the milestone will be crossed only in March 2012.

Amid all the ballyhoo over Uttar Pradesh being the site, one sombre fact relating to childbirth — that this is a female foeticide belt — could have got lost but for Plan, a UK-based children’s welfare group.

Plan has launched its own countdown for the “seven billionth baby” in Mal village, 30km from Lucknow, but is marking the day to draw the world’s attention to India’s seven million “missing” girls.

It has selected seven women from the village who are expected to deliver their babies in the early hours of October 31, said Bhagyashri Dengle, executive director of Plan India. In keeping with its campaign, Plan is likely to declare the first girl child among the seven as No. 7 billion.

“We are expecting that the seven billionth baby will be a girl child,” Dengle hoped.

Demographer and retired Lucknow University professor Ashish Sharma asked how one could identify the seven billionth baby even if he or she was born in the state, where nearly 16,000 are born everyday.

Whoever the “seven billionth baby” is, UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon has warned that it will most likely be “poor and will inhabit an earth buffeted by” global warming, desertification and food shortage. “We have to nurture this baby as much as we can,” he told world leaders last month.

On October 24, the UN started a global campaign, “7 Billion Actions”, asking individuals, organisations and corporations to share their stories of how the world of seven billion can become a better place for everyone to live in.

As for Pinky and husband Sachin, they have decided to name their baby Samrat if it is a boy, and Sneha if it’s a girl. Seven billionth or not, it would be their firstborn.

The Telegraph, 30 October, 2011, http://www.telegraphindia.com/1111030/jsp/nation/story_14685283.jsp


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