Essays

In India, we have inherited the cultural legacy of having strong son-preference among all communities, religious groups and citizens of varied socio-economic backgrounds. Patrilocality, patrilineage and patriarchal attitudes manifest in women and girls having subordinate position in the family, discrimination in property rights and low paid or unpaid jobs. Women's work is limited to household duties. At the lime of marriage, dowry is given by the bride's family to the groom's for shouldering 'the burden of the bride'. In many communities as a custom female babies are killed immediately after birth either by the mother or by elderly women of the family to relieve themselves from the life of humiliation, rejection and suffering.

Social discrimination against women results in systematic neglect of women's health, from womb to tomb. Female infanticide and female foeticide are widely practiced in many States. The overall sex ratio, at present, is favorable to women in Kerala. But in Kerala also, in the 0-6 age group, the sex ratio was 963 as per 2001 census. Out of total 36.5 lakh 0-6 Age group population 18.6 lakhs were male babies and 17.9 lakhs female babies. Thus, 79760 female babies and infants were missing in 2001 in Kerala. This masculanisation of sex ratio is as a result of selective abortion of female foetuses after the use of ultrasound techniques of sex determination.

The reason of female infanticide can be linked with the evil of dowry, hyper gamy, prevailing in our society. A more degrading and disparaging feature of the society has seen existing for the last two decades is the immense love for male child and elimination of female foetus. With invention of new technologies to monitor that 'Foetal' health, it was expected to be used for taking care of the health of the unborn  child, but became terminator of female foetus. Are female foetus being deliberate eliminated or aborted, is the question? To a great extent, yes! is the answer.

 Are the technologies (ultrasonography, amniocentesis, chorian villai biopsy, foetoscopy, material serum analysis etc.) assisting in elimination ? Again the answer is; yes, to a great extent.

The answer is well supported by the trends that surfaced in the 2001 Census. The following statistics reveal the truth:

&Census              -     Girl child/ male child ratio in 0-6 age group

l981                        -    962 Girls/1000 Boys

1991                       -    945 Girls/1000 Boys

2001                       -    927 Girls/1000 Boys

Biologically girls are stronger and with all the thrust on the well being of  girl child, the 1981 trends should have at least continued, but in the past 20 years ]; ratio has dropped considerably.

 While there can be no moral or ethical justification for foeticide still. continues to be practiced. In fact sex determination which was mainly restricted! Metres only now, are prevalent in villages as well. If sex determination tests are allowe to proliferate, and the elimination female foetuses allowed, the society should be to pay for this sin, after around two decades.

 The greatest supporters of a child (whether male or female) are the nature agents. If a girl has a father who loves her and grants all her fundamental rights the girl is inviolable. Fathers often provide material comforts but deny daughters the: right to choose their life partner. A few lines from a poem come to the mind when ob thinks of the way a girl fears her father—

Oh haste, thee haste, the lady cries Though tempests round us gather I will face the raging of the skies But not an angry father. ( From Lord Ullin 's Daughter)

For a daughter there can be no greater misery, than to know that her father doc not support her. If she was an unwanted child, the despair is compounded. To g; through life and realize that she was thrust on her unwilling parents, is a fate much worse than death. What can be more disgracing than the feeling of nothing more thai a contraceptive failure?

Some months back, Delhi University Students and teachers came out of the]; class rooms to support the amendment to the Pre-Natal Diagnostic (PNDT) Bill while A was tabled in Parliament, recommending more stringent measures against doctors who selectively abort female foetuses.

The amended PNDT Bill suggests certain important modifications in the existing 1994 PNDT Act which make it mandatory not only to register all kinds or techniques but to maintain records of every such scan. It also enhances the penalties for violation of the act. Of course, a powerful lobby of doctors resisted the amendments.

 Since 1979, when the first private sex determination clinic was set up in Punjab such clinics have proliferated rapidly. By the early eighties, such diagnostic cent had mushroomed even in rural areas, conducting sex determination for a few hundred rupees.

According to' Saheli 'a Delhi based women's group, between 1978and 1982, 78000 female foetus were aborted. During 1987-88, an estimated 13000 sex determination tests were conducted in seven Delhi clinics only. Today the North. Western States where such clinics had first appeared have the lowest sex ratio. Punjab has 793 girls for every 1000 boys, Haryana 820 girls/1000 boys and Delhi follows with 845 girls/1000 boys.

The decline in ratio in urban areas is more than twice that in the rural areas. It is true that women should have the right to abort their unwanted foetus, but if the technology is being used only to eliminate the female foetus, then it should be questionable.

 The amendment to PNDT Bill is one of the means towards an end. We must take a nationwide campaign against gender discrimination and inequities. The root cause for elimination of female foetus is to be traced unless the evil of forced marriages, dowry, illiteracy among the females are done away with lives of women will not improve. Banning prenatal sex determination might add a feather in the caps of rights activists; it will not materially improve the lives of women. A social awakening for true respect to the girls is required, a lot of honest hard work with full political 'will' in this field can only solve the problem.

Vocabulary

I, foetuses—enemy, opponent, antagonist, adversary.2. prevalent—widespread, accepted, frequently met.3. proliferate—lo increase rapidly in number or amount.4. inviolable— holy, sacred, sacrosanct. 5. contraceptive—preventive, controlling conception, preventing birth.6. stringent—acrimonious, rigorous, harsh. 7. mushroomed—toadstool, fungus, champignon (French), truffle.8. abort—stop, cut short, nullify.9. inequities—bias, partiality, inequity, preferential treatment.10. traced—outlined, drawn, sketched, delineated. 11. prenatal—before birth, during pregnancy, fetal.12. eliminate—take out, get rid of, leave out, omit.