The media can play a positive role in checking female foeticide and the falling female sex ratio. There were two stories on the subject that appeared in the Indian Express printed from New Delhi recently. While one was a dismal story on the grim future of girls in India’s Capital, the other was an upbeat story from a Ludhiana village about more girls being born than boys. The two stories, in fact, summed up the situation for the girl child in India—black clouds with some silver lining.
On September 24, the headline of the lead story in Express Newsline was ‘A Day for the Girl Child, but where is she?’ The report, based on the statistics provided by the MCD, shows that sex ratio in the Capital is getting more and more skewed despite the laws, the awareness campaigns and the innumerable stories in the media. In 2006, 831 girls were born for every 1000 boys in Delhi. The sex ratio had plummeted further from the 868 girls to 1000 boys in 2001. In fact in East Delhi’s Preet Vihar in 2006 there were 750 girls for 1000 boys, which is a sex ratio lower than of Punjab and Haryana in 2001.
The sunshine story, tucked in an inside page of the newspaper on October 3 this year tells you that in Bijlipur village of Ludhiana the sex ratio is 1800 girls to 1000 boys. This seems almost unbelievable because Punjab’s overall sex ratio in 874 females to a 1000 males. Between April 2002 and March 2008, 32 girls and 17 boys were born in the village. The 32 girls are between 3 and 6 years. The Anganwadi worker maintains not a single case of female foeticide has been reported in the village. Though there is only one school in the village, a great deal of emphasis is given to education in the village and children cycle to Samrala town for schooling. Seventy per cent of the village has passed high school. The Sarpanch’s four sisters have post graduate degrees. A former panchayat member Jasbir Kaur captures the mood of the village when she says “it is better to have five daughters than a drug addict son. Spoilt sons inevitably take the household to doom.”
I do think that the media has an important role to play in advocating on female foeticide and sex selection. Media campaigns on the falling sex ratio and discrimination against the girl child if well orchestrated by print and electronic media could shake/ shame the government and civil society and make them more them accountable.
The media has in fact played its role fairly well and is responsible for the large number of stories that you see in the national and regional media on the issue. Journalists are always looking for good human interest stories and there could be no better, though tragic a story than the dwindling female sex ratio of the country.
Starting from the eighties and nineties there were stories about the sick, skeletal thin girl child who was malnourished and anaemic because the mother would not give her as much food or care as her male siblings. It was a slow death of hunger followed by frequent bouts of ailments. In fact the stark discrimination compelled me to do a story for the Sunday section of the Times of India in the early eighties. There was an excellent picture to illustrate the story. The photograph, taken in a hospital, showed an emaciated girl and her fat brother.
Then there were several stories printed in the Mumbai and Delhi newspapers about doctors in Mumbai who were doing amniocentesis tests and telling pregnant women the sex of the foetus so that the woman had the choice to abort the unwanted female foetus. Those were the days before the boom of the ultra sound machines which caused further devastation of the sex ratio first in urban-- and then in rural India --- in particular the villages of Punjab, Haryana and Gujarat.
The census data of 1991 and then of 2001 further confirmed the fall in the child sex ratio. The 2001 census was an eye opener. It showed that the sex ratio in the 0 to 6 age group had dropped to an alarming low—from 945 to 927. The media picked up these aspects of the census data and flashed it across the country and even abroad. UNICEF estimates that 50- lakh covert female foeticides are taking place every year in India.
In the early nineties I got a copy of Viji Srinivasan’s report on female infanticide in Salem District of Tamil Nadu. The story made it to the front page of the Indian Express in all 17 editions. It sent shock waves through the nation and pulverized government and civil society into action. Subsequently I travelled to Salem and saw for myself the stark poverty and the crass discrimination against girls. The then chief minister Jayalalitha announced a cradle scheme so that unwanted girls, instead of being killed, could be left in strategically placed cradles for adoption by the state. The scheme did not get the expected response because many parents feared abuse of the girls left in state care when they grew up. They preferred to kill them.
Viji Srinivasan, who started the NGO Adithi in Bihar, also did a study in the state showing the role of the traditional birth attendants or dais in getting rid of the new born baby girl by placing her in an earthern pot and rocking the pot till the girl died of suffocation or broken bones. Subsequently she launched a major programme to sensitize the dais and stop this horrendous practice, and I think succeeded.
From Rajasthan, newspapers reported gruesome stories of baby girls being smothered to death with sand bags or an overdose of opium. In the tourist destination of Jaisalmer in village after village there were no girls. Only boys! Anuradha Dutt, who writes for the Pioneer, travelled to the area and reported that in the 100 Bhatti Rajput families of Devra village, Jaisalmer district, there were just two girls to 400 boys.
After a gap of 110 years, a barat had come to the village for the wedding of 17-year-old Jaswant Kanwar, the daughter of Inder Singh and Samada Kanwar. The news made national and international headlines. Jaswant was the first girl in the Bhatti Rajputs of the village to have survived in over a century and got married. The wedding was marked by three days of festivities.
The girl’s mother credited the miracle to “yogmaya ki aashirwad.” But the more mundane story, Anuradha reported, was that Samada was in her parental home at the time of the delivery and Jaswant was allowed to live because the village does not practice infanticide. Another version of the story is that Samada had lost a few sons before the birth of the girl and she was advised by her religious gurus to let a female child live to ensure the survival of her male progeny. After the survival of Jaswant, three sons were born to Samada.
In fact infanticide was said to be rampant in four villages -- Haathisingh, Devra, Kotha and Jarila—there were less than half a dozen girls in each of these villages. A social activist of the area was so appalled by the absence of girls in the upper caste Rajputs like the Rathores that he brought it to the notice of CRY (Child Relief and You) which arranged nationwide publicity of the baby girls’ death in the sand dunes and the dismal sex ratio.
Journalists, many on fellowships and travel grants from National Foundation for India, Press Institute of India etc fanned the countryside reporting foeticide and infanticide. Yogesh Yajpayei, currently an editor of the new English daily, Sakal Times, travelled to Bhind, Morena, Gwalior and other areas of Madhya Pradesh and reconstructed the stories of female infanticide and later, the foeticide practiced.
Fiftyfive year old Kalawati of Baghchini village in Morena district, spoke to Vajpayei after returning from a city clinic where she had got the female foetus of her daughter aborted. “I was forced to witness nine of my offspring strangled to death in front of my eyes because each time I gave birth to a child, it was a girl. At least my daughter did not suffer the pangs of sorrow that I did,” she explained.
In Gohad block of Bhind, Vajpayei reported, when a child is being born, the men collect in one room and the women in another. If a boy is born they bang a thali or fire in the air to announce his birth. If a girl is born, an elderly woman of the house goes to male members and asks ‘barat rakhni hai ya lautani hai?” If the reply is “lautani hai”, every woman leaves and the mother is asked to put tobacco in the girl’s mouth. There is no question of resistance, as it would mean that the mother herself is at risk of either being killed or thrown out of the house. In other areas successive girls were killed by smashing their neck with the leg of a charpoy.
In the Bundelkhand region, Kalawatis continue to remain unprotected victims of a starkly patriarchal system where women are not only grossly undervalued but their presence is negated.
Journalists Rashme Sehgal, Pamela Phillipose and Anruadha Dutt travelled through the killing fields of Punjab and Haryana to report on the boom in ultra sound clinics, the advertising campaigns by those running the clinics--- ‘spend Rs 5000 now and save Rs 5 lakhs later (as dowry). These slogans were boldly emblazoned on village walls. In fact it is only after the PCPNDT Act came into force that there were raids and punishment of doctors of ultra sound clinic announcing availability of sex selection facilities.
The statistics on the dismal sex ratio from the districts of Punjab and Haryana were flashed by the newspapers. A staggering 204 districts of the country have a lower sex ratio than the national average of 927 in the zero to 6 age. Fortyeight districts have a female sex ratio of less than 850. While decoy customers were sent in by activists to establish the clandestine practice of sex selection and abortion, newspapers dutifully reported it. In fact, if I recall correctly even a woman journalist went as a client to an ultra sound clinic and did an excellent first hand report on the issue.
In 2004/’05 the census commissioner did further analysis of the sex ratio and it was found that sex ratio had further plummeted in all the metro cities with the exception of Kochi, Asansol and Madurai.
A study of the births registered in the Delhi hospitals by the MCD between January and June 2004, showed there were 819 female births to a 1000 male births. The residents of South Delhi, it was established are girl haters. This was despite 2100 ultra sound clinics being under government scrutiny. The falling sex ratio had once again sent out signals that the clinics were promoting and practicing sex selection.
The emergence of technology as well as government policies like the two child norm had only fueled the sharp decline in the female child population. Even as the Federation of Gynaecologists and Obstetricians of India went public looking inwards and castigating their own fraternity for indulging in sex selection, the Jathedar of the Akal Thakt announced that female sex selection was against the Sikh tenants and offenders would be ex-communicated.
Census analysis religion-wise has shown that Sikhs have the worst track record for sex selection – 786 females for a 1000 males in the 0 to 6 age group. In fact in Punjab both Hindus and Sikhs do not want girls because they do not want to give a share in their shrinking agriculture land holdings to their daughters. Jains are known for their pacifist behaviour – walking without shoes and wearing a mask around their mouths--- but the sex ratio in this community is 870 females to a 1000 males. By comparison the Muslims have a robust sex ratio of 950 females to a 1000 males. The Christians are the most gender-just with 964 females to 1000 males.
With the advancement of technology, sex determination and selection has become easier. Doctors continued to surreptitiously conduct the test on one pretext or the other… the mother will be thrown out of the house… she wept before me….the family has daughters they need a son and an heir… etc. Code words were coined to convey to parents the sex f the child. If it was a boy, they would say barfi bantna hoga, and if it was girl ladoo dena. At the pre-conception stage itself parents can decide whether they want a girl or a boy. With availability of newer and more sophisticated technology, those determined to have a boy ensure they have one. Public mind sets are not changing.
Despite the laws, abortion on the basis of sex selection continues. Prosecution has been negligible and there have been hardly any convictions.
But the media has been at its job. There have been sting operations by TV channels showing clinics and doctors surreptitiously carrying on business. One such sting operation led to the arrest and prosecution of a well known, affluent gynaecologist whose husband is an IAS officer. I don’t know what has happened to the case. But such cases need to be followed up by the media in the same way as the Nitish Kataria, Jessica Lal murder cases.
It is the media that played up the story on the hundreds of fetuses found inside a well in a hospital compound in Punjab. Again from Bhubaneswar there was a similar story. There have been stories galore about the difficulties of finding brides in Haryana and Punjab. Girls from poor families were being imported from other states to become brides/ sex partners and domestic helps at the same time. Because of the shortage of women there were also stories of a women being shared by half a dozen brothers of all ages. In fact it was the cover story of India Today some years ago.
The journalist is always looking for a good story. He /she needs new leads / information to keep churning out stories. Civil society activists, researchers and those constantly monitoring statistics on child sex ratios are the persons with their ears to the ground who can tip them off for a story.
It is not always negative stories that make news. Stories of community action spearheaded by young dynamic IAS officers or health officials to stop sex determination also make good stories and inspire officials in other states to take similar steps. Last rituals being performed by a daughter, a family of only girls, all achievers, also make good stories. In Gujarat among the marriage vows that the young couple took was one not to indulge in sex selection. All these make good, off beats anchor stories for the front page or for a box item.
NGOs, civil society organizations and even the UN bodies have been giving scholarships to journalists to travel and write on the girl child. Eightyone UNFPA/Laadli awards were given in 2008 for the best writings, advertisements and TV stories and even street plays on gender issues/ girl child etc. The campaign has to be kept alive till public mind sets and perceptions change and girls/women get their due status in society.
I think we need to constantly high light our failure to prosecute those violating the PCPNDT Act. Success stories, like the one from Ludhiana, or the aitvi vachaan taken in Gujarat marriages ‘not to get rid of female foetus’ also need prominent display in newspapers. |
