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4. A Final Note: Murder on a Mass Scale

A Final Note: Murder on a Mass Scale

At the beginning of every action, look
at its end, so that you should not have
to repent on the day of judgment.
_{Maulana Rum}

The human mindset is deeply rooted; to avoid having to take action, we easily gloss over what we do not want to know. To emphasize the acute urgency of the need for change, this chapter presents you with the devastating statistics that have resulted from our low value for women. If we valued women as equal to men, these statistics and the reality on the ground would not be what they are.

Killing a living being is killing oneself; compassion towards creatures is compassion towards oneself.
_{Lord Mahavira}

They say a picture can convey more than a thousand words. The following graphs paint a very real picture of what has been happening to our daughters in the decade of the nineties, and allows us to project in our own minds how much worse the figures will be in the Census of 2011 if we do not reverse this appalling trend immediately.

1. The child sex ratio has been steadily declining over the past 40 years.

   

   This trend will continue to haunt the society for decades to come unless course corrective steps are taken.
   _{Registrar General of India, Census}

2. Sex-selection is more prevalent in urban areas than in rural areas.

   

3. Educated families are aborting babies at a faster pace than illiterate families.

   

4. Sex-selection occurs across all religions.

   

5. National averages hide steep declines and critically low ratios in certain regions.

   

   Just as throughout history euphemisms have been used to mask mass killings, terms like “female foeticide,” “son-preference” and “sex-selection” are now being used to cover up what amount to illegal contract killings on a massive scale, with the contracts being between parents and doctors somehow justified as a form of consumer choice.
   _{Dr Puneet Bedi, obstetrician, activist, as quoted by Christine Toomey, “Gender Genocide”, The Sunday Times, August 2007}

6. Globally our sex ratio is among the lowest and pre-dicted to soon be lower than China’s.

   

   As long as this indifference continues our numbers of missing girls will continue to increase. And in the next 10 years we are very likely to exceed China in terms of having the country with the largest number of girls eliminated before birth.
   _{Dr Sabu George, activist, as quoted by Steve Herman, Voice of America, March 05, 2007}

• In 2006, the prestigious British Medical Journal, The Lancet, published a study that argued that as many as 10 million unborn female babies may have been aborted in India over the past two decades.²⁶ The study estimates that sex-determination and selective abortion accounts for 0.5 million missing girls yearly. This amounts to one sex-selective abortion every minute! Doctors at the Indian Medical Association dispute these numbers, saying it is closer to 0.25 million missing girls yearly.²⁷

• According to a UNICEF report released in December 2006, about 7000 fewer girls than expected are born daily in India, and about 10 million fewer girls than expected were born in the past 20 years.²⁸ These figures are in line with the findings of the Lancet study.

• For a report in 2007, the group Action Aid sent interviewers to 6000 households in five regions of north India. In one state, researchers found rural areas with just 500 girls for every 1000 boys, and communities of high-caste, urban families with just 300 girls per 1000 boys.²⁹

• The Pioneer, October 28, 2001, reported that the 200-odd Rathore families in Western Rajasthan’s Barmer district have 2 to 4 male children each on average. There are only 2 girls in the entire clan. At a conservative estimate, the ratio is 400 male children to 2 female children.³⁰

We will have a better idea about the exact scale of the crisis only after the next census in 2011. In the meanwhile, while the experts argue over the numbers, girls are being eliminated every day.

The rights of others you do not understand;
Burdened with a load of ill-gotten wealth,
  you will have to return to the creation.
Robbed of a priceless opportunity,
  in the gambling den of the world,
  you are going to lose a winning hand.
_{Saa’in Bulleh Shah}

Recognizing the need for safe abortion services, the government enacted the Medical Termination of Pregnancies Act (MTP Act) in 1971. It is an important aspect of protecting women from unwanted or dangerous pregnancies which they often face. However, although abortion is legal under the MTP Act, sex-selection (conducting a sex-detection test and aborting the foetus if it is a girl) is absolutely illegal under the newer Pre-Conception & Pre-Natal Diagnostics Techniques (PC & PNDT) Act which was enacted in 1994 and amended in 2003. Most experts agree that this Act, despite its problems, is actually a comprehensive and effective piece of legislation. The problem lies with its implementation.

According to the Act, it is illegal to conduct a sex-detection test.

If half a million girls are aborted every year, it can be assumed that at least one million illegal sex-detection tests are performed each year since only one out of every two tests on average will reveal that the baby is a girl.

Any genetic clinic, counseling centre, or laboratory, conducting these tests must be registered under the Act.

Today there are over 30,000 registered ultrasound clinics in India. It is estimated there could be 2 to 3 times as many in operation illegally. ³¹ There are thousands of ultrasound machines installed in vans and on motorcycles by profiteers who travel from village to village charging rural families exorbitant fees for the procedure.

The law states that no person conducting the test should communicate to the pregnant woman or her relatives the sex of the foetus, using words or signs, or in any other manner.

Doctors continue to communicate the sex of the foetus, clearly banned by the Act, through an innovative coded language:
“It’s time to buy blue clothes,” “Go buy pedas,” or “Jai Shri Krishna,” if the foetus is a boy.
“It’s time to buy pink clothes,” “Go buy burfis,” or “Jai Mata di,” if the foetus is a girl.
_{PC & PNDT Act, A Handbook for the Public ³⁰}

Any form of advertisement of sex-determination tests is illegal.

Some doctors’ billboards continue to advertise with statements like “Invest Rs 5000 now and save Rs 5 lakh later,” to encourage parents to abort female foetuses and save on a future dowry.

Contravening the provisions of the Act can lead to a penalty, which in May 2008, was increased to anywhere between Rs 3 – 7 lakh. Additionally perpetrators can face jail terms of 3 months to 3 years.

The law was enacted in 1994, yet the very first conviction of a doctor, sentenced to two years in prison for violating the Act, was in March, 2006.³²

• In India today, sex-detection and selection is an over Rs 400 crore business and growing.²⁷

• Medical professionals have benefitted from promoting the technology for decades. It is no coincidence that no medical association has taken a strong stand to curb the unethical use of diagnostic procedures. In fact the medical lobby is powerful and has fought to control their commercial interests. Doctors have even gone to court against the law.

• While some ultrasound manufacturers take care to ensure they only sell to registered clinics, a vast number of machines are sold without the necessary paperwork.

• Ultrasound machines are used not just for sex-detection, but also for very important medical purposes: detecting abnormalities in the foetus, protecting mother and child from harm, and for several non-gynaecological purposes like detecting cancers, etc. However the demand for ultrasound machines has exploded over the past 20 years due to the enormous demand for sex-detection tests, and multinational companies have been flooding the market with machines to meet the demand.

• The sale of ultrasound machines in India brought in Rs 308 crore in 2006, a 10% increase over the previous year.³⁴

India is the world’s largest democracy. We were one of the first countries to grant women the right to vote (in 1928). Our Constitution is one of the finest in the world. It promises justice to all; it promises liberty of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship to all. It prohibits discrimination on the grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth.

Are our women getting their constitutional rights?

• Freedom to lead a long life
• Right to health
• Right to education
• Freedom to work without exploitation
• Freedom to participate in decision-making
• Freedom from fear

When a woman’s right to life itself is taken away, all these other rights accorded to her by the Constitution are effectively meaningless.

We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty.
_{Mother Teresa}

The numbers, graphs and statistics can never truly tell the real story – the story of the pain a woman suffers. The purpose of the following excerpts is not to judge anyone; the purpose is to urge us to really see what is going on in the lives of our daughters; the purpose is to move us, so we feel compelled to help.

For nineteen-year-old Reena dreams of a happily married life were never to be. Barely a month after her marriage, she was allegedly tortured and then set ablaze by her in-laws for dowry in Indiranagar in the small hours of Saturday. Daughter of the late Ghanshyam Chand, a fish contractor who expired a year ago, Reena was married to Sunil on April 19^th ... However, soon after the marriage, Sunil’s father demanded a colour television instead of a black and white one and a motorcycle as well. When Reena’s mother failed to meet their demands, the teenage housewife was subjected to severe physical torture, allegedly by her husband and mother-in-law... On Saturday morning Reena’s mother was informed that Reena was charred to death when a kerosene lamp accidentally fell on her and her clothes caught fire. However, prima-facie it appeared that the victim was first attacked as her teeth were found broken. Injuries were also apparent on her wrist and chest.
_{Times of India, Lucknow, May 27, 2001 [Names changed]}

Veero (not her real name) looks anaemic and malnourished and years older than her 34 years. If one half of her life has been spent yearning for a son and having four abortions, one after the other, the rest of it is full of regret for not having anybody who will give her “paani te aag” (to perform the last rites). “Munde de bina maa-peo rul jande ne” (Without a son, parents are ruined), she says, her eyes brimming over with tears and unknown fears lurking in them. Her three daughters are not hers: “Aulad te munda hi hoonda hai. Kudiyan te beganiyan hoondian.” (Only a son is truly one’s child. Daughters belong to others.)
_{Aruti Nayar, “Silent Genocide”, The Tribune, May 6, 2001}

In a shocking discovery, the Orissa police on July 23, 2007, recovered as many as 30 polythene bags stuffed with female foetuses and the body parts of newborn babies from a dry well near a private clinic in Nayagarh, close to Bhubaneswar ... A report said that the police searched the well after seven female foetuses packed into polythene bags were found dumped in a deserted area in a nearby village in mid-July 2007. The police haven’t ruled out a link between the two incidents and are suspecting a female foeticide racket ... This discovery is just part of an unending series of female foeticides that have been happening in several parts of the country. In June 2007, a doctor was arrested on charges of illegally aborting 260 female foetuses after police recovered bones from the septic tank in the basement of his maternity clinic in the outskirts of New Delhi.
_{“No End for Female Foeticides in India”, Dance with Shadows, 24 July, 2007}

At a workshop in a remote village in Rajasthan, a woman who had come with her 8-month-old son and 3-year-old daughter suddenly found the son ill with high fever. The boy was struggling to breathe. It was a remote village where there were no medical facilities, and she pointed to her daughter and said, “I wish this had happened to her.”

Anyway, the boy was shifted to a hospital the next day and got well. Later, when I told her I was disturbed by her comment, she said, “Look, if my daughter had died, I would have still been allowed to go back home. But if my son, born after four daughters, had died, there was no way I could return home. I would have had to commit suicide, there is no way the family would have accepted me, because this is a prized son.”

No mother likes to kill her child, but this is the way women live; their pain is determined by other forces; they cannot decide when to mourn, whose death to mourn and how to mourn. These are the realities on the ground.
_{Abha Bhaiya of Jagori, as quoted by Rasheeda Bhagat, “Slaughter in the Womb”}

A woman upon being told that her child is healthy and beautiful looks away sullenly. A nurse explains, “It’s a girl, that’s why.” In another part of the country, a woman sits worriedly in the gynaecology ward of a hospital. She is seven months pregnant. An ultrasound scan has told her it’s a boy and she doesn’t want to lose “her baby.” About her earlier two pregnancies she says, “Donon time test mein ladki nikli to safai kara di.” (Both times the test revealed it was a girl so I had them “cleaned out.”)
_{Justice Y. K. Sabharwal, Chief Justice of India, in his speech, “Eradication of Female Foeticide”}

Trafficking of women from Assam to Punjab and Haryana has been on the rise due to the skewed sex-ratio in these two states. In some cases minor girls in batches of four or five who have been trafficked from Assam are openly put up for sale at prices ranging from Rs 10,000 to Rs 30,000 in some panchayats of Haryana. Such girls are known as Paros in Haryana.
_{Ravi Kant, Executive Director of Shakti Vahini, as quoted by Sushanta Talukdar, “Trafficking of Women from Assam on the Rise”}

Thirty-six year old Sukhraj Singh works as a labourer in a dairy farm in Milan, Italy, but he is in Amritsar on a mission. Childless for the last seven years, he and his wife came down to the Bir Baba Budha Mandir to pray for a son. However, last year when his wife had a baby daughter both husband and wife were shattered. So this year they’re back again – to ask for the son they never had.

“We prayed at this temple and then we had a daughter. So we have come back again to this temple, this time I want a male child,” he says ... For years people from India and abroad have been flocking to temples and gurudwaras like this one, spread all across Punjab in the hope of a male child. Visitors here say that asking for a girl is not even an option ...

This is evident when one sees 19-year-old Rajwant Kaur visiting these temples to pray for a brother – she seems to know she is a burden on her family. “No one wants a girl anymore. Everyone wants just boys and that’s because often parents can’t pay the dowry so they pray that no girls are born into the family,” she says.
_{Nilanjana Bose, CNN IBN, “Son Temples of Punjab”}

“It is the will of God that only sons are born in this household now,” says Balvir Kaur as her husband hovers in the background. “We don’t feel disturbed by this. The main reason is to keep property in the family. We have to learn how to cope. Earlier there was infanticide, now there is foeticide,” she says, adding quickly that this had not happened in her family. Only when Balvir moves away and leaves me briefly with her daughter-in-law Kulwinder, does a hint of sadness enter the conversation. “I wish I had a daughter,” she says. “A woman feels awful without a daughter. Daughters help their mothers. I still feel sad about it,” she says, looking away. “But there were miscarriages.”
_{Christine Toomey, “Gender Genocide” The Sunday Times, August 26, 2007. At the village of Dera Mir Miran, Sex Ratio 361 (Census 2001)}

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