“Bringing up a daughter is like watering a neighbour’s plant.” How true is this! But the same daughter blossoms into an affectionate wife and a caring mother. And everyone craves for a beautiful amiable wife and a most considerate mother, and yet the buds of these future forms are butchered. How just is this??
Are all those people, indulging in this most inhuman act of female foeticide, heading towards an all male world? Just look at the distressing decline in the sex ratio- the number of girls per 1,000 boys slipping from 945 in 1991 to 927 in 2001. And I can bet this scale would have sunk down deeper by now.
Indians’ age-old liking for boys and believing girls to be a burden, more than often make them think to pay Rs. 5,000 now rather than spending Rs. 5,00,000 later. But don’t you think that if the sex-ratio keep reducing at similar rate then the number of girls left over to be future brides will be alarmingly less! And consequently the demand for a bride may be so high that, instead of you expecting huge amount as dowry, you may have to actually ooze out your wallet to buy a bride!
But before such disastrous virtual thoughts mould into reality, we have a seemingly successful solution at hand. A Cabinet minister has come up with a proposal, which will require all pregnant women in India to register with the government and get official permission if they want to have an abortion.
Abortions have been legal in India since 1971 and are viewed as a way to curb population growth, but Prenatal sex determination tests and abortions on the basis of gender are both illegal. Women and Child Development Minister Renuka Chowdhury said that women would only be allowed to have an abortion when there is a “valid and acceptable reason.” But how do you define “valid” and “acceptable”? And who will decide it and more important how?
And moreover won’t it be a violation of privacy? Ranjan Kumari, President of a group of women’s non-governmental organizations called Women Power Connect says, “It can lead to too much intrusion on somebody’s private life. It will also be very difficult to obtain such data. Whether such a thing will be possible in a democracy, I doubt.”
The success of this step may be doubtful but one thing is for sure- that its high time to pay heed to the sinking sex ratio.
Tags: Female foeticide, Sex ratio