Mar

6

Renuka Chowdhary, India’s minister for Women and Child Development, told a surprized audience yesterday that about 1 million Indian female babies have gone missing and were most probably victims of selective abortion at the hands of their own parents and families who opted for aborting the female fetuses after finding out about the gender of the fetus. India, she said, has seen a steady but a drastic fall in female population over last several years, a decline entirely attributable to the availability of methods that enabled early detection of a baby’s gender.

Between the hundred years from 1901 to 2001, the ratio of females to males in India fell from 972 to 933 females per 1000 males. If that trend continues for another millenium, India will end up with about 1 female per 10 males by year 3000.

Some doctors in India dispute such numbers, and point out that stricter laws about prenatal sex-determination have had some effect on curbing any untoward practices. But it is generally accepted that the ban on prenatal sex-determination is still ignored and flouted in the back alleys of a large number of medical clinics that put money before scruples and continue to administer the prenatal tests enabling interested parties to opt out of unwanted female child pregnancies.

Many have blamed the practice on economic hardships but recent research disputes that assumption and shows that female feticide is more prevalent in socially affluent class than in the lower socio-economic strata.

On a day when the minister of child welfare testified about a million babies murdered, India’s news media, however, was busy singing the praises of its sports heroes and talking about a Maharashtrian politician bashing Bihari parliamentarians. That we can calmly and sedately look at this horrific statistic as if it were some insignificant number is a reflection on the declining sense of righteousness and compassion in a country that seems to have lost its moral compass just as it has lost a million innocent lives. It is also a sign that we as a nation have become numb and dumber.


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7 Comments so far

  1. Pilid on March 7, 2008 4:26 am

    What would you suggest to address this problem?

  2. indiatime on March 7, 2008 2:23 pm

    One of the reasons an issue such as this doesn’t generate enough outrage is because the perpetrators of the feticide are the parents and the families themselves, the very people who should be looking out for those fetuses.

    It would take incredible leadership on some individual’s part to elevate such a moral outrage issue to the forefront of the Indian psyche. That would need someone who has the charisma of a Shah Rukh Khan or an Amitabh Bachchan, the activism of a Medha Patkar or Jai Prakash Dabral, the persistence and moral courage of a Gandhi, and the wisdom of a Kalam.

    This can also be a great cause for someone like Pratibha Patil, our first woman president, who has no other centerpiece cause. She should make this her calling if she wants posterity to remember her as someone of significace and influence. Her presidency would be a major waste if she misses this rare historic opportunity to act on the issue of female feticide.

  3. aboobakkar on March 9, 2008 1:59 pm

    Nobody,seems to have thought about this angle.The “elites” want to DEPOPULATE the world,by culling 500 CRORE Humans.This may be an idea suggested by them.
    http://www.bilderberg.org
    http://www.conspiracyarchive.com
    http://www.trueconspiracies.com

  4. Maureen on December 3, 2008 12:06 am

    We have gotten to a place in this world where it seems so easy to just blot out the slaughter of precious babies as if it is no big deal, how sad for us. We have so much and yet we seem not to have a clue to what is really happening here, so sad for us.

  5. Mitul on January 14, 2009 7:44 pm

    People who did this will have to face god one day and he is going to say simply that for your greed of wanting money you will live in dump and eat shit and marry the devil because thats what you deserve.

    Women who are educated need to take a stand and promote less educated women and men. and for those who do kill female babies should stop being lazy and expecting to have a male child to provide for them all their lives. Men are increasingly becoming slaves in India to their parents. You need to start to work as parents and dont expect anything in return from your child.Nobody will ever progess this way its a backward system and i can guarentee ppl who do this are poor or live in small dwellings.

  6. Laura on April 10, 2009 9:55 pm

    This is simply a very abnormal behaviour. Murdering is then allowed and accepted. Women are the garbage of that society…a motive for depression and sadness…Men, human beings.
    Definately, Indian poverty is not in their economy but in their minds.
    What saddens me the most is to realise that this is not a political problem in itself, but a problem in the mind of their citizens.
    Numb and dumber.

  7. Momma threw me from the train : It’s Indiatime on May 3, 2009 5:25 pm

    [...] Numb and dumber - a million female babies murdered in India [...]

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