MISSING GIRL CHILD
by
SHEFALEE VASUDEV
In Chandraprakash Dwivedi’s cinematic adaptation of Amrita Pritan’s novel PINDAR the three daughters of an affluent Amristar-based zamindar jump in joy, hugging each other when their middle-aged mother delivers a baby boy. Soon after, the eldest daughter is abducted by a Muslim youth but she manages to escape and return to her parents. “Go away, die or disappear. You are a daughter–how can we take back a kidnapped, humiliated girl? You should have died before birth”, lamented her parents.
That was pre-Partition India. When girls were considered “burdens” and parents killed or abandoned their newborn girls. Half a century later, modern urban India–which should have provided the blueprint for a completely new order of cultural thought and practice–still clings to the same beliefs. It kills girl children before they are born. Education, global exposure and affluence, all of which translates into easier access to expensive technology, have made it easier to select the sex of the child. If there is a choice, it is always for a male child. Despite a stringent law, doctors and patients manage to evade it. That is the message of a study by India’s registrar-general and census commissioner, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and the United Nations Population Fund which was released last week.
Based on the 2001 Census figures, the study finds that in the 0-6 age group, the most prosperous states of India like Delhi, Punjab, Haryana and Gujarat have the lowest sex ratio(number of girls per 1,000 boys.) The most affluent pockets in some cities show the sharpest drop. South-west Delhi for instance, where some of the richest and most educated of Indians reside, has a child sex ratio of only 845 as against 904 in 1991. This is the sharpest decline in the sex ratio in the country. The findings were serious enough for the UN to urge India to take urgent steps to address the problem. The heinous practice of female foeticide in villages, a result of the age-old belief that a male child is necessary for devolving inheritance, is now an urban reality.
“If the enactment of a law was the only thing needed to curb this menace, this would have stopped long ago,” says Union Health Minister Sushma Swaraj. “But it is the social belief that having sons is the only way to continue the family lineage that perpetuates this,” she adds. Even rising education levels have not shattered the myth that having a son is the solution to every emotional, economic, spiritual and social problem in life, “Education has got nothing to do with it.” says Dr. Gautam Sehgal, treasurer of the CII’s Indian Healthcare Federation, who runs the AIDS Diagnostic Center in Delhi. “I have received requests for sex determination from friends, people who have studied and lived abroad, people for whom money is the least of problems.” he adds.
Such voices are many. “Female foeticide is just one facet of the vast anti-women behavioral spectrum in India How much choice educated urban women have itself is a debatable issue,” says Dr. Suchitra Delvie, medical director, Family Planning Association of India (FPAI) But Delvie’s argument is only one half of the truth. The tragedy is that even women who have the choice, opt for a male child. Ask Savitar Dhingra, a 27-year-old mechanical engineer. She has had three abortions after her marriage and is yet to have her first child. Ultrasound tests had revealed that she was carrying a female foetus each time. Dhingra is unapologetic. “I always wanted a son as my first child, ONLY THEN CAN WOMEN BE RESPECTED”, she says. On the other hand, there are hundreds of cases of forced sex-determination tests, forced abortions, family wars and property disputes, all for want of a son. The technologically assisted male-producing industry is now running rampant in urban India.
WHY URBAN INDIA
“Education, exposure, and affluence have not brought values such as equality,” explains Murli Desai, head of the Family Unit at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. “It has brought consumerism and a commodification of relationships. Women prefer sons, as it is often the only way to increase their status in the otherwise subordinate life,” he adds. The biggest shift has been in technology. Easy sex-determination and latest abortion techniques have reduced the risk rate for women, earlier exposed to fatal complications if they terminated advanced pregnancies. Falling infant mortality rates and later the two-child norm also made male children the most wanted, since people didn’t need to “go on trying”. Tamil writer Vaasanthi, whose influential novel KADASI VARAI (Till the End) on this subject is being translated into English, agrees. “The new urban cultural mindset is that of extreme consumerism, which has trapped even the educated element.” she says.
Delhi is a prominent battlefield. Swaraj feels that excessive availability of machines could be fueling female foeticide. Others cite the poor implementation of laws. “In the past two years, the monitoring committee of the Government of India found that the implementation of regulatory structures is very poor, particularly in Delhi,” says activist Sabu George. There are roughly 700 ultrasound machines in Delhi itself. A senior official from the Department of Family Welfare confirms there are 21,000 registered ultrasound centers in India. She admitted that a random inspection resulted in 400 cases of seal and seizure because they were not registered with the Government and in 40-50 cases, the centers were advertising sex-determination tests.
That’s not all. Abortion pills like MTPill and Misprost, which should not be sold without a doctor’s prescription, are available off the counter. Taken without medical guidance, they could lead to septicaemia, excessive bleeding, even death. INDIA TODAY bought these pills from several licensed chemists across Delhi, who even gave bills without seeing a doctor’s prescription.
BREAKDOWN IN ETHICS
Two decades ago, doctors used to openly advertise sex selection tests for families desperate for male heirs. In the 1990s, the name of Dr. Aniruddha Malpani of Malpani Clinic in Mumbai’s upmarket Colaba became associated with infertility treatment. His website advertised how one could choose the gender of the unborn child, claiming to be one of the few in the world to pre-select embryos to guarantee a son. Today, Malpani is facing criminal charges for misusing pre implantation diagnostic techniques like FISH for sex selection. Malpani is quick to defend himself. “In a democracy, people should be allowed to make decisions. In any case, how many can afford pre-implantation tests?” he asks, suggesting that only the rich go for such costly tests.
But statistics show that it is the rich who yearn for male offsprings more than anybody else and doctors are making the most of it. “If medical ethics had not failed, we would not have had millions of missing girls,” says George, who has fought this battle for the past 19 years. Clearly, had the medical community refused to be a party to the crime, female foeticide would not have been a grim reality. “I stopped practicing obstetrics and only do gynecological endoscopies because I was fed up of people wanting help to conceive only male offspring,” says Delhi gynecologist Dr. Rahul Manchanda.
The lure of fast bucks is enough to make doctors–who are supposed to counsel and protect women pressurized by families to produce male children–feed on their vulnerability. The Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) Act was enacted to ensure reproductive freedom and makes abortion on demand legal up to 12 weeks of normal pregnancy and up to 20 weeks on medical grounds. But the law has been grossly misused and abortion has become a thriving business in India. “Some doctors prescribe abortion under the guise of various medical reasons,” says Manchanda. Abortions can be done for between Rs 3,000 and Rs 30,000 in urban areas.
“Sex determination is done at one clinic and the abortion at another, making it difficult to accuse patients of female foeticide,” says gynecologist Dr. Bindu Suri. Often, such frantic procedures are carried out in makeshift operation theaters using unsterile kits, adding to the risk to the woman. As Dr. Sohani Verma of Apollo Hospital in Delhi, points out, “Complications arising out of abortions remain one of the biggest causes of death of young women in India.”
Doctors are smart when it comes to ducking the law. “They rely on code words,” says Sehgal. So sentences like “the sky is blue” and “your baby is fine and will play football” (indicating that the child is male) or “you are in the pink of health” and “your child is like a doll” (denoting a female child) help convey the message subtly.
THE SPREADING MENACE
In April 2001, the Akal Takht, the supreme temporal seat of the Sikh faith, banned female foeticide, reaffirming the Sikh principle of branding kudimaar (the killer of daughter) a cardinal sinner. But till now, the clergy has not received a single complaint. Paradoxically, the number of godmen offering concoctions and blessings to facilitate the birth of a son continue to proliferate in Punjab. And female foeticide continues to thrive. “Punjab has become more patriarchal than it was in the beginning of the last century and the girl child is now seen as a bigger liability,” says Panjab University sociologist Rajesh Gill. Only in Punjab is the birth of a son a major public event.
The state has another dubious distinction. Some of its districts have recorded the lowest sex ratio in the country. A 2002 study by the Chandigarh-based Institute of Development and Communication reveals that 92 percent of educated high-income group women who went in for sex-determination tests were aware it was illegal while 77 percent of those who opted for female foeticide knew it was a crime. Forty-three percent families perceived the male child as a prospective earner and 58 percent as protector while 55 percent of urban middle-class Punjabi families considered girls as a burden. All across north India the birth of a son is announced triumphantly with the beat of a brass thali and the distribution of sweets and money while that of a girl is met with silence and dejection, if not condolence.
North India is also where dowries are the biggest and dowry deaths most common. In Bihar, marrying off a daughter can reduce parents to penury. No wonder then that Patna-based NGO Adithi found in a survey that an estimated l,63,200 female infants are killed every year in the state which, incidentally, is ruled by a woman. In Haryana, mobile clinics brought sex determination to the patient’s doorstep, with doctors carrying a generator and an ultrasound scanner to carry out the devious ritual.
TIME TO ACT, OR.......
The Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PNDT) Act is a stringent law but poorly implemented. Sehgal suggests that ultrasound clinics should be in proportion to the population of a state. An ultrasound machine with a black and white scanner costs over Rs 3 lakh while a color Doppler scanner costs between Rs 16 lakh and Rs 75 lakh. Considering that a sex-determination sonography fetches Rs2,000-4,000 and an abortion at a small nursing home costs Rs 3,500, the demand for these services must be really big for so many diagnostic centers and abortion clinics to be in business. However, after the PNDT Act was re-amended in 2003, even the medical equipment industry has suffered a setback.
A letter written in May 2003 by Anjan Bose, chairperson of the CII’s Medical Equipment Division, to the Department of Health and Family Welfare said, “The lack of clarity on the part of the authorities in understanding and implementing the act has resulted in a slowdown of the sale and registration of ultrasound machines, which has adversely impacted business.” However, manufacturers of equipment are clear that they will cooperate with the government to curb female foeticide. “We strictly sell only to registered centers,” says Rohit Mehta, joint general manager, medical equipment systems, Larsen and Toubro, a manufacturer of ultrasound machines. “Even though our business suffered in the first quarter after the act was re-amended, we have stopped demonstrating at unregistered centers,” he adds.
Swaraj feels the implementation of laws is just one facet of the war against female foeticide. “We have started a positive campaign for the girl chid, with tennis star Sania Mirza as the ambassador this year. The Health Ministry’s 2004 Republic Day tableaux too will be on the girl child theme,” she says. We need the support of religious opinion makers to eradicate the belief that only a son ensures a passage to heaven,” she says. In fact, Swaraj, who herself has only one daughter, may be a good example for those who argue in favor of sex selection by saying that a family should be “complete”, meaning a son and a daughter.
But the social fault line runs deep and the alarming drop in the number of girl children can have serious social consequences. The decline in the sex ratio will play havoc with India’s population stabilization program, which requires a balanced gender ratio and a limit on the number of children born every year. Even those who don’t believe in female foeticide but still want sons will need a check. Otherwise it might lead to an alarming reversal in the trend towards a declining population growth. Apart from putting pressures on resources, food and living space, it could lead to increased social tensions. It is a major social flaw in a society that claims to have made progressive strides. Female foeticide will disempower Indian women. As sociologists stress, it is only empowered women who raise similar children and nurture strong families. Fewer girls will also mean that their childhood, their marriage and their future will come under a variety of social and physical threats, where only those who have power, wealth, influence and are male will dictate their choices in life. It is the stuff nightmares are made of.
