Saving unborn female children

By Shibani Dasgupta

The women are at the receiving end even before they are born and when we talk about schemes to contain female foeticide that are proven failure then one suspects the rulers believe more in tokenism than actual results. Ever since PNDT Act came in force in 2003 only one conviction has been recorded. Surely something is wrong somewhere as the sex ratio continues to decline.

The Government is correctly and naturally concerned about increasing number of female children’s killings even before they can be born in the country. Ms Renuka Chaudhuri, Minister of State for women and child development has a suggestion - her scheme to stop female fetuses from being decimated is to let the baby be born and then leave her at government run centres for bringing them up.

It could be noted here that Ms Choudhury's suggested scheme christened "Palna" or "cradle", has earlier precedents but they have been a failure. Former Tamil Nadu chief minister Ms. J Jayalalitha's cradle baby scheme to prevent rampant cases of infanticide in Tamil Nadu had come to naught. What finally worked was the law banning infanticide.

Despite cases being registered against doctors illegally carrying out sex determination tests, the Prenatal Diagnostic Technique (PNDT) Act has done little to salvage the adverse sex ratio, which fell from 945 girls per 1000 boys in 1991 to 927 girls per 1000 boys in 2001 and is likely to show further fall in the next census figures.

According to child life activists, as the co-chair person of Central Supervisory Board of the PNDT Act, Ms. Choudhury's primary job is to enforce the law by stopping doctors who are doing sex-selective abortions. It should be her prime concern to encourage people to abandon their unwanted daughters instead of killing them. Some of these activists are responsible for filing a public interest litigation in Supreme Court seven years ago, that led the Court to direct the Centre and states to implement the PNDT Act.

The Central Supervisory Board that Ms Choudhury co-chairs with Union Health Minister Dr. Anbumani Ramadoss, has been set up at the directive of Supreme Court to create public awareness against female foeticide. The Court had also directed the Government to implement with "greatest vigour and zeal" the PNDT Act. However, according to government records, only one doctor in Haryana had been convicted since 2003.

Health Minister Ramadoss tries to show his earnestness as he points out by saying almost 400 cases have been registered all over the country and one conviction has taken place in Haryana this year. “We want to give the appropriate authorities who are empowered to implement the Act more teeth to make more convictions possible.” It is said a committee chaired by Health secretary Mr. Naresh Dayal will recommend ways to plug loopholes in the Act by April this year.

The findings of National Family Health Survey of 2005-06 reinforces the fact that people in India prefer sons to daughters. A survey of 2,30,000 people across India showed that while 83.2% do not want more than two children, the percentage dropped to 62.1 percent among children with two daughters.

The budget proposals for women and children for 2007-08 have not satisfied NGOs or activists. While the outlay for women was 100% more than last year's allocation their share in the total outlay is less then 1% of the budget. The kitty for women-specific programmes has gone up to Rs. 8975 crores from 4618 crores, but it is just 0.1% of the total outlay.

For schemes where 30% of the amount is for women, the increase is over Rs. 5000 crores to Rs. 22,382 crores, but women's organizations have cried foul because they feel the outlay does not match the country's women population. Further, Mr. Chidambaram's proposal to increase outlay for the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) by just Rs. 700 crores has left the campaigners for the Right to Food for 47 percent of Indian children who are malnourished, gasping. India's poorer neighbours like Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Bhutan were faring better in hunger abatement, according to UNICEF officials.

Ms Brinda Karat, Rajya Sabha MP and CPI(M) politburo member is perhaps unhappiest of all over the budget allocations. She has pointed out that the Finance Minister has chosen to protect the India of booming stock exchanges and balance sheets over the India of farmer suicides, growing ranks of unemployed and increasing number of malnourished, primarily women and children.

A news report that appeared around International Women's Day has recorded that recent studies of drug abuse among women that single women are more prone to drug abuse than married women. One such survey in which drug abusers in New Delhi, Mumbai and Northeast were interviewed, were found to be either single or separated or divorced. Ninety percent of the women were using heroin as the primary form of drug abuse. It shows the unhappy state of mind of many of the Indian women.

The National Family Health Survey has dealt a body blow to Bengal's record of women's education, health and empowerment this year. According to the survey 40 percent of Bengal's women face domestic violence. This is borne out by the state's crime bureau records, which shows such cases going up from 4789 in 2000 to 7024 in 2004.

It would certainly be embarrassing for the Bengal government that even Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh – once part of the infamous Bimaru (underdeveloped) states, are making better progress than Bengal.

It is certainly time for pulling up the collective socks in our country where women and girl children used to be given the status of goddesses.

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