A tale of 200 million girls who are missing!

In India, China and many other parts of the world today, girls are killed, aborted and abandoned simply because they are girls. The United Nations estimates as many as 200 million girls are missing in the world today because of this so-called “gendercide”.

Today India and China eliminate more girls than the number of girls born in America every year.

The United Nations estimates estimates as many as "200 million girls" are missing in the world today.

A heart wrenching account of this malaise. Don't miss the last interview of a Tamil woman.

The three deadliest words in the world : "It's a girl"

India's unwanted daughters and the American connection

AS HE walked into the maternity ward of Lok Nayak Jayaprakash Narayan Hospital in Delhi on his first day at work in 1978, Puneet Bedi, a medical student, saw a cat bound past him “with a bloody blob dangling from its mouth.” “What was that thing—wet with blood, mangled, about the size of Bedi’s fist?” he remembers thinking. “Before long it struck him. Near the bed, in a tray normally reserved for disposing of used instruments, lay a fetus of five or six months, soaking in a pool of blood…He told a nurse, then a doctor, I saw a cat eat a fetus. Nobody on duty seemed concerned, however.” Mara Hvistendahl, a writer at Science magazine, is profoundly concerned, both about the fact that abortion was treated so casually, and the reason. “Why had the fetus not been disposed of more carefully? A nurse’s explanation came out cold. “Because it was a girl.”

Sex-selective abortion is one of the largest, least noticed disasters in the world. Though concentrated in China and India, it is practised in rich and poor countries and in Buddhist, Hindu, Christian and Muslim societies alike. Because of males’ greater vulnerability to childhood disease, nature ensures that 105 boys are born for every 100 girls, so the sexes will be equal at marriageable age. Yet China’s sex ratio is 120 boys per 100 girls; India’s is 109 to 100.

The usual view of why this should be stresses traditional “son preference” in South and East Asia. Families wanted a son to bear the family name, to inherit property and to carry out funerary duties. Ms Hvistendahl has little truck with this account, which fails to explain why some of the richest, most outward-looking parts of India and China have the most skewed sex ratios. According to her account, sex-selection technologies were invented in the West, adopted there as a population-control measure and exported to East Asia by Western aid donors and American military officials.

The ultrasound and other technologies that identify the sex of a fetus started out as diagnostic devices to help people with sex-linked diseases, such as haemophilia, conceive healthy children. They were greeted rapturously in America in the 1960s. “Ultrasound Device Takes Guessing Out of Pregnancy” ran one headline. “Control of Life: Audacious Experiments Promise Decades of Added Life” ran another.

But 1960s America was also a period of growing concern (hysteria, even) about population in developing countries. Policymakers, demographers and military men all thought rapid population growth was the biggest single threat to mankind and that drastic measures would be needed to rein it in. One such figure was Paul Ehrlich, whose book, “The Population Bomb”, became a bestseller in 1968. Mr Ehrlich pointed out that some Indian and Chinese parents would go on having daughter after daughter until the longed-for son arrived. If, he argued, they could be guaranteed a son right away, those preliminary daughters would not be born, and population growth would be lower. Sex selection became a tool in a wider battle to stop “overpopulation”.

But how did an obsession of Western policymakers turn into the widespread practice of destroying female fetuses in Asia? Partly, argues Ms Hvistendahl, through aid. The Ford and Rockefeller Foundations gave over $3m to the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in the 1960s, helping it to pioneer India’s first amniocentesis tests, initially for genetic abnormalities and later for identifying fetal sex. India at that time was the World Bank’s biggest client, and the bank made loans for health projects conditional on population control.

A review of the book Unnatural Selection by Mara Hvistendahl in The Economist. Here

Mujhse milne tum Jannat mein kaise aaogi Maa?

Samahath Sama Sharif, studies in a Government Urdu Primary School in Bangalore. She is the daughter of renowned social activist Mr. Atharullah Shariff. She recently enacted the inner voice of a female foetus  her travails, suffering, and the longing to come out and see the world.

Samahath’s moving recital made the audience, mostly women, break down. This Urdu poem is written by Dr. Hanif Shabab, Bhatkal, who is the president of Idara-e-Adab-e-Islami, Karnataka.

On the occasion, a talk on “Stop female foeticide, protect rights of the girl child” was organised, women from all walks of life took part in it. Among others, Naomi Junaid, Chairperson, PRCI, Bangalore Chapter, shared her thoughts on female foeticide and how the greed of a few doctors was spreading the obnoxious social evil in the country.

Institutions and NGOs interested in organizing her performance may contact Mr. M.A. Shariff on 9448589604. Dr. Haneef Shabab, Bhatkal 99863 00865

Following is the poem recited by Sama

Line Cut Gayee

Hello, Maa!
Assalamu Alaikum
Main Jannat se bol rahi hoon

Kaisi ho Maa?

Yahan Jannat mein phool khile hain
Manzar jagmagaa rahe hain
Doodh ki nadiyan baih rahi hain
Thandi hawayen chal rahi hain
Chidyaan naghme gaa rahi hain, saheliyan geet suna rahi hain
Allah ki Tareef ho rahi hai
Main jhoolon mein jhool rahi hoon
Pariyon ke sang khel rahi hoon

Main Jannat mein khush hoon Maa!

Lekin, lekin tum yaad aati ho
Hello, hello, Maa,
Bolo Abbu mere kaise hain?
Ghar pe saare kaise hain?
Bolo Maa
Dharti, Ambar, Chaand Sitare
Duniya kaisi lagti hai?
Sona, jagna, hansna, rona
Yeh sab kaisa lagta hai?
Bolo Maa!

Kya tum bhayya ki ankhon mein bhi
Kaanta, chhuri chubhoti ho?
Kya tum apne munne ka sar patthar se kuchlogi?
Kya tum apne jigar ko khud hi apne hathon kaatogi?
Nahin naa!

Phir mere saath hi tum ne aisa bartao kyun kiya?
Bolo Maa!

Apne naseeb ka khana to main khud laati
Auron ka hissa thodi khati
Jis Maalik ne tum ko diya tha, sab ko diya tha
Who mujh ko bhi de deta
Main duniya mein chand din rahti
To kaun si aafat tum par aati?
Abbu ke seene se lagti, saath mein bhayya ke bhi rahti
Munne ke sang hansti bolti
Tum se lori sunte sunte godi mein so jaati na Maa!

Lekin, lekin
Tum ne mujh se mera jeene ka haq chheen liya
Pait mein apne tum ne mujh ko
Bolo kaise qatal kiya?
Chaqu,  Chumta, Qainchi, Kaanta
Mere badan mein ghonp diya!
Mujh ko tum ne tukde tukde karwaya
Khoon mein mujh ko Nehlaya
Aur gutter mein phenkwaya!
Hoon! Hoon!

Pyari Maa! Acchhi Maa!
Yeh to bolo
Duniya jise kahte hain
Jis mein insaan baste hain
Wahan kutte billi ko bhi kya aisa karte dekha hai?

Hello Maa!
Main Jannat mein khush hoon
Lekin, lekin
Yaad tumhari aati hai!
Yeh batlao kya tum ko bhi meri yaad satati hai?
Tum ne kab mera koi naam rakha tha
Jo tum ko main yaad aati
Phir bhi Maa
Mujh se milne ek din tum bhi
Is Jannat mein aajana

Lekin, lekin, Maa!
Mera Maalik, mera Aaqa jab tum se yeh  Poochhegaa
Wo kya jurm thas jis ke badle mein tum ne mera qatl kiya?
Bolo Maa, kya bologi?
Khaliq Maalik Allah se?
Socho Maa, kuch to socho, jaldi socho

Warna, warna, mujhse milne tum Jannat mein kaise aaogi Maa?
Hello Maa, hello, hello Maa, hello… hello…
Maa… Maa…

From Karnataka Muslims. More Here

Mathrubhoomi (Motherland): A Nation Without Women

WE are a fascinating land of amazing contrasts. In the land of Seeta, Saraswati and Durga, women face depths of depravity. Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state, witnessed more than a dozen rapes in about 72 hours. And this is a state that not just sends the largest number of lawmakers to Parliament, it is ruled by a powerful woman. Things are not dramatically different in rest of the country. In fact, national capital New Delhi is also the “rape capital” of the nation.

The largest democracy on the planet is turning increasingly inhospitable to the other half of the population. For all its breathless economic growth of recent years, India reports a high incidence of sexual assaults on women, one of the highest in the world. As many as 85 percent of women in New Delhi fear being sexually targeted when they step out of their homes.

Again, New Delhi is ruled by a woman chief minister, Sheila Dikshit. Indeed, for the first time in our history, we have four women heading four crucial states, not to forget Sonia Gandhi, the Congress president and the power behind Manmohan Singh's throne.

In fact, women have never had it so good in terms of both political and economic empowerment. They just do not beat boys every year in every examination, they have been challenging male dominance in virtually every sphere of activity— from banking and business to Bollywood to sports and in professions that have traditionally been male bastions.

Yet this extraordinary economic and political ascent of Indian women has also seen a disturbing and proportionate rise in crimes against the fair sex, probably a natural progression of male chauvinism. This silent war on women is not confined to sexual abuse and harassment at work place and in colleges and universities. We are killing women even before they arrive in this world. While we have always been a sexist society, science and new technology have honed our deep-seated prejudices and old-fashioned insecurities to a deadly perfection.

The 2011 census of India offers disturbing findings. The gap between the number of girls per 1,000 boys has widened to 914, a decrease from 927 a decade ago. The girl child in India is fast becoming an endangered species, thanks to an increasing use of what is euphemistically known as "gender selection." This is nothing but cold blooded murder, as ruthless as the heinous practice of the pagan Arabs and ancient Rajputs to bury girls alive in the name of some elusive honor.

As India gets richer and its economic growth rate competes with China, it's increasingly shutting the door on its girl children. And female feticide or the so-called sex selection using ultrasound technology is not limited to metros or big cities anymore.

Thanks to our economic liberation and an increasingly profit-driven medical industry, the blessing of ultrasound technology has now invaded the remotest parts of rural India. Identifying and eliminating female of the species has become a massive, self-feeding industry. Indeed, it's a booming market out there that sells death and thrives with hospitals, companies selling ultrasound machines and prospective parents of course all being part of a conspiracy of silence. Ironically, India's most prosperous states, Gujarat, Punjab and Haryana, are also its deadliest for girls. Being 10 to 15 percent of girls in these states are killed in their mothers' wombs. Over the past one decade, an estimated 15 million of girls were killed using the technology that was actually supposed to save lives.

Nearly 1500 girls are aborted everyday, as against 250 Indians who are killed in traffic accidents. Natural selection should and would have yielded an additional 600,000 girls every year. According to UNICEF, some 7,000 fewer girls are born every day than ought to be. The financial capital and home of the Bollywood dream industry, Mumbai, boasts a ratio of 874 girls, one of the lowest in the country. Jhajjar district in Haryana could well be the capital of female feticide, with 774 girls against 1,000 boys. No wonder in recent years the ratio of women across the billion plus nation has fallen to alarming proportions.

This was perhaps only inevitable in a culture in which boys have always been celebrated and pampered and girls made to feel unwelcome like nowhere else in the world. The child sex ratio is only emblematic of the status of women in the country.

Stand back and look at the issue: This is nothing but another form of rape and abuse. Except it enjoys the sanction of society. Killing machines that these “ultrasound clinics” essentially are do not operate in secret. They do business with impunity in full public view and right in the heart of our cities and towns and no eyebrows are raised. And all this has been happening right under the nose of successive governments led by Sonia Gandhi's Congress and the sole champions and defenders of Mother India, Bharatiya Janata Party.

It's not as if there are no laws.  The Prohibition of Sex Selection Act or PNDT came into being in 1994 but has never been enforced. In 2001, the Supreme Court ordered central and state governments to strictly enforce the law by forming vigil squads. Little has changed though.

Indeed, the last decade has turned out to be the deadliest yet for girl children. Why do we insecure and arrogant men forget that our own existence is owed to women? Would we exist without the existence and magnanimity of our mothers? And I say this as a son, brother and father of girl children. We should be ashamed of ourselves and what we have visited on our women over the years and decades. Who has given us the right to deny a fellow human something that does not belong to us? Since when have we become God? The giving and taking of life is the right of the One who gave us life too.

Where do we go from here, or rather, where would we end up with our sick, morbid obsession with boys and lethal aversion to girls? Some answers are offered by a chilling, if slightly skewed, film called Mathrubhoomi (Motherland): A Nation Without Women. The movie is set in a future Indian village that, yearning for a boy, kills its newborn girls one after another. It eventually ends up as a village with no women. So the men try to quench their natural cravings with the help of porn and animals. When a father finally finds a bride for his youngest son, she ends up being "used" not just by the entire family but the whole village. I know the movie is absurdly exaggerated. But if we are going the way we are going, we could very well end up in another Mathrubhoomi.

Aijaz Zaka Syed in Arab News. Here

India's unwanted girls

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh described female foeticide and infanticide as a "national shame" and called for a "crusade" to save girl babies. But Sabu George, India's best-known campaigner on the issue, says the government has so far shown little determination to stop the practices.

Until 30 years ago, he says, India's sex ratio was "reasonable". Then in 1974, Delhi's prestigious All India Institute of Medical Sciences came out with a study which said sex-determination tests were a boon for Indian women. It said they no longer needed to produce endless children to have the right number of sons, and it encouraged the determination and elimination of female foetuses as an effective tool of population control.

"By late 80s, every newspaper in Delhi was advertising for ultrasound sex determination," said Mr George. "Clinics from Punjab were boasting that they had 10 years' experience in eliminating girl children and inviting parents to come to them."

In 1994, the Pre-Natal Determination Test (PNDT) Act outlawed sex-selective abortion. In 2004, it was amended to include gender selection even at the pre-conception stage.

Abortion is generally legal up to 12 weeks' gestation. Sex can be determined by a scan from about 14 weeks. "What is needed is a strict implementation of the law," says Varsha Joshi, director of census operations for Delhi. "I find there's absolutely no will on the part of the government to stop this." Today, there are 40,000 registered ultrasound clinics in the country, and many more exist without any record.

A report in BBC. More Here

Declining sex ratio and heart wrenching questions

India's sex ratio, among children aged 0-6 years, is alarming. The ratio has declined from 976 females (for every 1000 males) in 1961 to 914 in 2011. Every national census has documented a decline in the ratio, signalling a ubiquitous trend. Preliminary data from the 2011 census have recorded many districts with sex ratios of less than 850. The ratio in urban areas is significantly lower than those in rural parts of the country.

Reports suggest evidence of violence and trafficking of poor women and forced polyandry in some regions with markedly skewed ratios. The overall steep and consistent decline in the ratio mandates serious review.

Sex selection and technology : Medical technology (like amniocentesis and ultrasonography), employed in the prenatal period to diagnose genetic abnormalities, are being misused in India for detecting the sex of the unborn child and subsequently for sex-selection. Female foetuses, thus identified, are aborted.

A large, nationally representative investigation of married women living in 1.1 million households documented markedly reduced sex ratios of 759 and 719 for second and third births when the preceding children were girls. By contrast, sex ratios for second or third births, if one or both of the previous children were boys, were 1102 and 1176 respectively. A systematic study in Haryana documented the inverse relationship between the number of ultrasound machines in an area and the decline in sex ratios. Studies have also documented correlations of low sex ratios at birth with higher education, social class and economic status. Many studies have concluded that prenatal sex determination, followed by abortion of female foetuses, is the most plausible explanation for the low sex ratio at birth in India.

K S Jacob in The Hindu. More Here

The missing daughters of India

According to the 2011 Census, the number of children in the 0-6 age group has fallen from about 163.8 million in 2001 to about 158.8 million now—an indicator of declining fertility.

Falling numbers

However, the census also points out that the decline is greater for the girl child. While there was a decline of almost three million among girls, the decline among boys was only a little over two million.

“There are two main causes of skewed sex ratios in places like Jhajjar. One, foeticide, and two, dipping fertility rates,” said activist Sabu George, who works in the area of women development and empowerment.
“With economic development and prosperity, the preference for a small family has increased, and along with it the desire for a boy child has been further enhanced.”

George, too, claims female infanticide is rare and limited to some very “difficult areas”.

An example of the small family phenomenon can be seen in Khetawas village, where most couples prefer to have two children, or even one child. Of a population of around 2,200 in the village, only 900 are women.

“People are now becoming more aware of the benefits of small families, and hence, are limiting themselves to one or two children,” said village council chief Malta Devi. ” Because of that, the demand for a boy has increased even more. So when a couple has a boy as their first born, they undergo surgeries to ensure they can’t conceive again.”

“We had two boys and then I got an operation. Why should I risk having any girls now? We don’t want so many children,” said Hemlata of Khetawas.

The social repercussions of this phenomenon of the missing daughters are already apparent in Jhajjar. In the conservative Jat-dominated Mathanhail village, the skewed sex ratio is forcing many young men to marry from outside the state.

“The main problem of less women is we are finding it difficult to get our sons married, ” said 50-year-old Krishna, whose two sons in their 20s have been unable to find suitable matches. “So we have to now get girls from Bihar, Jharkhand, Bengal, Orissa.... This is leading to further cultural problems.”

Naresh, who uses only one name and married Sunita from Jharkhand two years ago, said: “I faced a big problem. There were no women. I couldn’t get married till I was over 30, when we got Sunita from another state.” They now have a one-month-old daughter.

“I got married around two years ago and have managed to now learn the customs and language,” said Sunita. “But it is very different here as compared to where I am from. I have to cover my face. It wasn’t so strict there. It is more conservative here.”

Both Sunita and Naresh say their daughter will be treated differently.

Ruhi Tewari in Livemint. More Here.

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