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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Unwanted daughters: India battles with "gendercide"

Unwanted daughters: India battles with "gendercide"

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published Published on Apr 20, 2012   modified Modified on Apr 20, 2012

-NYDailyNews.com

Recent deaths of battered baby girls in different parts of India have jolted the nation's conscience. The United Nations ranks India as the deadliest place for female children.

A few days back, 3-month-old Afreen died of cardiac arrest in a southern Indian hospital. She bore signs of beatings and cigarette burns, allegedly abused by her father.

The 25-year-old father was apparently upset at having a daughter instead of a son, his wife told police. He was arrested in Bangalore and faces murder charges.

In a similar case in March, another "unwanted daughter" and victim of trafficking, a battered toddler with a fractured skull and broken arms, died in the capital New Delhi.

On Tuesday, a father was arrested in the northern city of Amritsar for allegedly strangling his wife for giving birth to a third girl. The victim's brother said, "We tried to make him understand a boy being born is in the hands of the Almighty and the girl is also a gift of God. But he just wouldn't hear our pleas."

Girls are being killed across India, while female fetuses are found in garbage dumps or abandoned wells. The recent cases of battered babies have jolted the nation's conscience and sparked debates on the status of girls and women.

At the root of the age-old preference for sons is the perception that girls are an economic burden and require huge dowries, while sons are the breadwinners who will look after their parents in old age, said Gita Aravamudan, the author of Disappearing Daughters, a book about female feticide.

The United Nations ranks India as the deadliest place for female children. Data released in February by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs revealed that an Indian girl between 1-5 years was 75 per cent more likely to die than a boy. The data showed that India also had the worst record in female infant mortality.

This is in a country with a female president, Pratibha Patil, and female chair of the ruling coalition party, Sonia Gandhi.

A study published in 2006 in the British medical journal Lancet about Indian birth rates over the past 20 years, determined the country had 10 million "missing" females. Prenatal sex determination and selective abortion accounted for 500,000 missing girls annually.

As India emerges as an economic power, the status of girls is the only social indicator that has not responded positively to growing education, prosperity and medical progress. According to the 2011 census, the child sex ratio was 914 girls for every 1,000 boys, the worst since the country's independence in 1947.

The global discrepancy at birth is about 950 girls for every 1,000 boys. Urban areas, including those in economically developed states such as western Gujarat, have emerged as centers of feticide, recording adverse gender ratios as low as 770 girls per 1,000 boys.

Studies also indicate that the more educated a woman is, the more likely she is to choose a boy if she decides to have a single child.

"It's almost as if education, wealth and technology are conspiring to work against the girl child and this manifests in rampant feticide, infanticide and trafficking of girls," said Harpal Singh, an industrialist who runs the non-profit Nanhi Chhaan. "Some studies project that by 2025 there will be 20 million boys of marriageable age, who will not be able to find a partner."

The 1994 Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act was aimed at preventing misuse of diagnostic techniques and curbing feticide, but its implementation is weak. "In the last 15-plus years of the law, 600 cases were brought to court of which only 80 have seen convictions," Singh said, backing calls for stricter punishment by fast-track courts to build deterrence.

Policies and laws that lead to gender inequalities also need to be amended, experts say, for instance by bringing parity in inheritance and property rights or at the workplace, in terms of pay scales.

"The government has to go beyond tokenism," says Shanta Sinha, chairwoman of the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights. "There are schemes which should be made comprehensive so every vulnerable girl gets access to education and healthcare and does not drop out of school or is married off in a hurry," she said.

Singh, the industrialist, said, "Until the mindsets and values change, the society will find new ways to finish them (girls) off."

Author Aravamudan said: "No lessons are learned as people don't admit their wrongs, and say it is their family matter. In a country that worships goddesses, there is a silent gendercide happening. It is a national tragedy."

NYDailyNews.com, 18 April, 2012, http://india.nydailynews.com/newsarticle/4f8ecb764dd34f751c000000/unwanted-daughters-india-battles-with-gendercide


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