The National Advisory Council (NAC) wants the government to assess if its cash incentive scheme for the welfare of girls meets its objective of reducing gender selection, as there’s no official study yet to suggest that it does. As part of its recommendations for a national policy to stem India’s declining sex ratio, NAC also sought the formation of a communication and advocacy strategy and stronger laws to prevent the misuse...
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India’s Girl Child Struggles to Survive by Sujoy Dhar
At the intensive care unit of the state-run All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) hospital in New Delhi, a two-year-old battered baby girl is fighting to survive. The doctors attending to her have waged a six-week battle to keep her alive, but they are quickly losing hope that she will ever live a normal life after the torture she endured at such a tender age. When she was first brought to...
More »Don't trash this law, the fault lies in non-implementation by Brinda Karat & Sabu George
There can be little quarrel with the argument that India requires a comprehensive policy to prevent sex selection as put forward by National Advisory Council members Farah Naqvi and A.K. Shiva Kumar in The Hindu (“India & the sex selection conundrum,” January 24, 2012). That the use of sex selection technologies to abort female foetuses is linked to the increasing devaluation and disempowerment of women is well known. It is...
More »Gender balance gadget by Sonal Matharu
States turn to dubious technology for saving girl child With the country’s child sex ratio hitting an all-time low—944 girls for every 1,000 boys—states are turning to a monitoring device to fix the imbalance. Public health activists say the device, called Silent Observer, is more hogwash than an answer. Silent Observer can be fitted into sonography machines to allow the authorities to monitor and record pre-natal ultrasound scans taken by doctors. It...
More »Tracker controversy by TK Rajalakshmi
The use of tracker technology to zero in on the misuse of diagnostic techniques for sex determination has evoked mixed reactions. ONE of the least discussed issues in the context of the data thrown up by Census 2011 is the worrisome decline in the child sex ratio (CSR) and the not-too-perfect implementation of the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act, or PCPNDT Act. There is reason to...
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