"It's a girl!", a simple sentence, which brings smiles and happiness of welcoming a newborn girl child to a family brings grief, anger, and death to a countless number of families in many regions of India. India is a land of Gods and Goddesses, religious believers' and spirituality since the pre-historic era. It is a country where people of every gender worship Goddesses like Durga, Saraswati, Parvati and Sita. In a country where people hold Kanya Puja with the belief that by worshipping girls their prayers are answered, hundreds of newborn female children are killed soon after their birth.
Female infanticide has always been a concerning issue in India for ages. The latest UNFPA report stated that an estimation of 4,60,000 girls went missing at birth in India between 2013-17 due to gender-based sex selection (GBSS) in both pre and postnatal sex selection. There has been a reported imbalance in India in the sex ratio at birth since the 1970s due to the emergence of prenatal sex selection and the cultural preference for male babies. The preference for male children over female children among Indian parents led to female infanticide and gender discrimination on a massive scale in India. Many of them continue to see boys as an asset and girls a liability.
Reasons why male children are preferred over female children in India
In India’s patriarchal society, a son is considered to look after his parents when they become old and take over the responsibilities of the family after his father’s death, unlike daughters, who after marriage, has to take care of her husband’s parents, but not her parents.
Daughters are often considered a burden for them as the parents are pressured to pay dowries when their daughters marry. Instead of providing higher education and encouraging their daughters to be financially independent, they get her married as soon as she enters the reproductive age, to get done with their parental duties. They believe Marriage and motherhood defines successful women, and not working.
The prevailing ideology, ‘Boys are stronger than girls’, ‘girls are weak and powerless’ remains to get passed down from one generation to another. Girls are usually not encouraged to fight on her own or speak up and often mocked when they show interests in sports, karates or other adventures which requires physical strength.
As per an age-old Hindu tradition, that states that only sons can light the pyre of the parents, Daughters, apparently, are not allowed to perform the last rites of their family members, is another reason behind India’s obsession with having a male child.
Consequences of female foeticide
Sex-selective abortion and killing of girl child after their birth lead to a decrease in the female population. Due to which it is becoming difficult to find brides for marriages. This in turn leads to female trafficking. A living example of India’s rapidly worsening gender imbalance can be seen in villages of Uttar Pradesh, Haryana etc where a large number of men remains unmarried. With the decrease in the number of women, men consider themselves more superior and above law, which in turn results in sexual violence and abuse against women and children. According to reports, in 2011, 15,000 Indian women were bought and sold as brides in areas where foeticide has led to a lack of women. There is an increase in maternal deaths due to forced abortions and early marriages.
The Present Scenario in India
The government of India and Indian NGOs are keenly working together towards abolishing Female infanticide and other injustices done against women in India. Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques Act (PCPNDT) in 1994 was passed by the Indian government to ban and punish prenatal sex screening and female foeticide. It is currently illegal in India to determine or disclose sex of the foetus to anyone. There has been a decline in abortion rate at many urban and rural areas.
Various Government schemes like ‘Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao’, Sukanya Samridhi Yojana etc aims at saving the girl child from societal issues like gender-based abortions and advance girl child education across the country.
Families in urban cities have become more positive towards girl children and villages like The village of Piplantri in Rajasthan has inspired others to follow in its footsteps. With the birth of a girl child, 111 trees are planted and money deposited into a fixed account. The National Girl Child Day is celebrated in India every year on January 24. It was started by the Ministry of Women and Child Development and the Government of India in 2008, with the purpose to spread awareness among people about all the inequalities girls face in the Indian society.
In spite of all the steps taken by the government and NGOs, India still fights female infanticide and gender discrimination every day. An estimated 6.8 million fewer female births will be recorded across India by 2030 due to sex-selective abortions, according to a study that projects the highest deficits in the birth of girls will occur in Uttar Pradesh. People still don’t celebrate the birth of a girl child, like how they do when a male child is born.
The only way to put an end to a social evil like the female infanticides is when the citizens stand united in driving away such ill mentality from the country. Education is the only way by which we can change the minds of the people.
Daughters are the creators of the future, we must save them at all cost, let the girl children see the world.
By:
Gracy Debbarma
FYBSc
202492
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