|
 Indiajoins well over 140 countries around the world on the second Sunday of May every year to celebrate Mother's Day, dedicated to honor caring mothers across the globe and express gratitude for the hardships they bear in bringing up a child.
The day is certainly not a novel concept in India, as people there have been celebrating a score of goddesses representing shakti-divine power. Puja (worship) has through centuries been organized to honor the divine mother Durga and the Great Mother - Kali Ma.
Yet the hypocrisy of Indian society is pellucid as on one hand it worships women goddesses and on the other it doesn't hesitate to kill these goddesses.
India has of recent been witnessing a rapid unfolding of a female genocide across all castes and classes, including the upper caste rich and the educated.
The nation of mothers still follows a culture where people idolize sons and mourn daughters. UN figures estimate an average 2,000 unborn girls a day while some 750,000 girls are aborted every year in India. Abortion rates are increasing in almost 80% of the states, mainly in Punjab and Haryana.
These two states have the highest number of abortions every year. If the practice continues, a day will come when Mother India will have no mothers, potentially, no life. In parts of Punjab there are only 300 girls per 1,000 boys, says Action Aid in its report titled "Disappearing Daughters."
Compared to approximately 105 female births for every 100 males in most countries, India has less than 93 women per 100 men. The disturbing ratio of females to males has resulted in fewer high caste women in some remote areas of Gujarat and Punjab.
Consequently tribal women are being imported to service whole families of men - fathers, sons and brothers. Middlemen in such areas have cropped up who supply girls at between 500 and 60,000 rupees a month.
The disparity is due to rampant female infanticide in India, prompted by the age-old dowry system which requires a family to pay out a hefty amount when a female child is married. For a poor family, the birth of a girl spells financial ruin and extreme hardship.
However, the Hindu newspaper reports that change is taking place as girls are consistently doing better than their male counterparts at school and college and are branching into traditionally male fields like engineering and medicine.
UNICEF recently reported that some 50 million girls and women are missing from India's population as a result of systematic gender discrimination.
 The Action Aid report cites findings from five states - Punjab, Rajasthan, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh - in north and northwest India, revealing that the sex ratio of girls to boys has not only worsened but is accelerating compared to the last national census in 2001.
One of the reasons is the abuse of ultrasound technology to determine the gender of the unborn. The promoters of the ultrasound business in every city, town and village of India entice parents by telling them to spend Rs.500 now and save dowry money of Rs. 5 lakhs later.
Officially the number of operative pre-natal units is 25,770, whereas the unofficial count puts it at more than 70,000. Abortion practice is hugely lucrative for doctors. They charge a minimum of 5,000 rupees for an abortion. The procedure performed by licensed professionals, has now become "a multi-billion rupee industry", report media.
Action Aid has also found that girls are more likely to be born but less likely to survive in areas with more limited access to public health services and modern ultrasound technology.
In some rural areas deliberate neglect of girls, including allowing the umbilical cord to become infected, is used as a way to dispose off unwanted daughters.
Surveys show a decline in the proportion of girls among second-born children. For every 1000 third-born boys, there were fewer than 750 girls.
The Indian Diaspora is not immune to the cultural bias against female children. Male-female ratios of British Indians are also getting increasingly skewed in favor of males. Since the 1970s, the male-female ratio of British Indians newborns has dramatically changed from 103:100 to 114.4:100, according to UK media.
Indian at-birth male-female ratios are the worst in the world. In spite of China's one child policy, the ratios in China are better than in India. Pakistan's at-birth male-female ratios are comparable to most of the West.
Indian Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh, who has three daughters, appears shocked at the accelerating horror of female genocide as an estimated 50 million girls have been sacrificed on account of male preference in India. Launching the "Save the Girl Child" campaign he has said that no nation could claim to be part of a civilized world if it condoned female feticide.
UNICEF says the problem is getting worse as scientific methods of detecting the sex of a baby and of performing abortions is improving. These methods are becoming increasingly available in rural areas of India, fuelling fears that the trend towards the abortion of female fetus is on the increase.
In a shocking discovery, the Orissa police on July 23, 2007, recovered as many as 30 polythene bags stuffed with female fetuses and the body parts of new-born babies from a dry well near a private clinic close to Bhubaneswar. The body parts included skulls and bones dumped into the well soon after birth or abortion at the clinic.
In June 2007, a doctor was arrested on charges of illegally aborting 260 female fetuses after police recovered bones from the septic tank in the basement of his maternity clinic on the outskirts of New Delhi.
Shocking statistics reveal that as many as 10 million girls in India have been killed by their parents either before or immediately after birth over the past 20 years.
To contain the situation, India enacted Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques (Regulation and Prevention of Misuse) Act, 1994.The law offers provisions to jail violators for a term of three years and imposition of fine of up to Rs.10, 000. With conviction, the imprisonment term can extend up to five years and a fine of fifty thousand rupees.
Around 5,800 women are annually done away with on account of dowry payment, Time magazine reported. However, unofficial estimates cited in an article a decade ago by Hamada Taker, titled, "Are our sisters and daughters for sale?" put the toll at 25,000 women a year, with many more left maimed and scarred as a result of attempts on their lives.
Many of the victims are burnt to death - they are doused with kerosene and set on fire by demanding in-laws. The anti-dowry and anti-domestic violence laws enacted in India in 1961 and in 1983 have failed to halt dowry transactions and the violence associated with them. The police and the courts are reported to turn a blind eye to cases of violence against women and dowry deaths. 
|
Show/hide comments
Show/hide comment form
