In
Tamil Nadu, while the Infant Mortality Rate fell from 125 in 1970 to 54 in 1996
(which means more babies survived), the juvenile sex ratio (between ages 0 to 6
years) declined from 1010 in 1941 to 948 in 1991 (showing that for every average
1,000 of the population, 62 fewer girls lived to grow).
Missing
Babies and Fetuses
The
New York based Population Council’s 1991 Review estimates the total number of
“missing females” worldwide at 60-100 million. Of these, 32 million missing
females are (ironically) ‘found’ in India. Figures are painstakingly
compiled from the gender differences in the Infant Mortality Rate and Neonatal
Mortality Rate (which indicate the existence of female infanticide).
Even
within Tamil Nadu, certain districts are more vulnerable than others. The
Department of Public Health survey of 1995 put the at birth sex ratio (a
better indicator of feticide than the general biological average) at a
disturbing below-900 in the districts of Dharmapuri (893), Salem (the worst at
839), Periyar (876), Coimbature (893), Thanjavur (883) and Kanyakumari (866).
Only
the first two of these are economically backward areas while the rest, along
with other districts with adverse sex ratios such as Nagapattinam, Nilgiris,
Pudukottai, Virudhanagar and Perambalur belong to the “prosperous/developed”
blocks.
Across
Tamil Nadu, there has been a significant increase in the so-called
“ultrasound” clinics that openly offer sex determination and preselection
tests - they are a flourishing business in small townships like Namakkal,
Usilampatti and Salem (the last alone has 73 such shady enterprises).
All
agencies concur that while official figures may like to quote a certain decline
in female infanticide (even the country paper presented at the Fourth World
Conference on Women in Beijing claimed a narrowing of the gender gap in the
child mortality rates), it will remain a dubious claim since technology has only
advanced the age (or lack thereof) at which the girl child is done away with.
How
History Repeats Itself
The
practice of female infanticide is documented to have existed in Europe in the
early twentieth century and was found across Pakistan, West Asia, China and
North Africa. The causes ascribed to that old practice include, besides the
control of the population and socio-religious practices such as superstition and
the disposal of handicapped/illegitimate babies, the gender-based selective
killing of female children.
One
of the earliest records of female infanticide in India points to a clan of
Rajputs in Uttar Pradesh, the discovery of which is credited to Jonathan Duncan,
a British official posted in Northern India. Subsequent to this, the British Raj
passed the Infanticide Regulation Act of 1870 to curb, among other variations,
the widespread incidence of neonaticide (the killing of a baby within the first
24 hours of birth).
To
date, the problem is more widespread in the states of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh,
Rajasthan and West Bengal and found only in some fairly widespread, but no less
disturbing, pockets of Tamil Nadu. It has been suggested (but not proven) that
the practice died down for a while in between but has staged a dramatic revival
in the last two decades alone.
How
Society Fails
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A woman without sons is considered barren and she risks being turned out of her marital home
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Underlining
the absence of a society’s collective conscience, the practice of female
infanticide is the result of typically tradition-bound gender discrimination and
extreme patriarchal perceptions. A woman without sons is considered barren and
she risks being turned out of her marital home - a situation that has to be
avoided no matter what the cost.
The
more immediate and economic reasons include socially predetermined expenses that
have to be incurred for girls: for everything from the cradle ceremony to
marriage to even menopause, which the natal family of a woman is required to
provide for. One advertisement for sex-selective abortion exhorted, “Spend Rs
500 now to save Rs 50,000 later”.
The
media as well as the perpetrators take poverty as explanation enough, almost
justifying a decision motivated by abject despair. But it has been equally
well-documented that these very same families somehow find the wherewithal to
raise one or more sons. The practice of female feticide/infanticide also plagues
even the economically better off families.
Cold-Blooded
Murder
In
modern times, the practice of killing female babies in Tamil Nadu was first
brought to the attention of the country by two expose articles - one which
appeared in the Tamil biweekly Junior Vikatan in December 1985 and the other in
India Today in June 1986.
In
the former, the journalist was passing by a village and a stray conversation led
to an old woman being drawn into a discussion about new-born girls when she
remarked in a give-away, abruptly terminated one-liner, “In our parts, if
girls are born one after the other, they (her parents) make their hearts (as
hard as) stone and...”.
Only
after much prodding and reluctant discourse did the case (with identity of the
interviewee concealed) make the headlines and much media hype followed. The
result was that infanticide activities went underground.
In
a case reported in January 1994, a field worker found that a healthy 3.5 kilo
baby girl discharged from the hospital had disappeared on a subsequent visit to
the child’s home. Lodging of a report, apprehension of the mother and
exhumation - from the front yard - of the infant’s body followed, leading to
forensic reports suggesting manual strangulation.
Often
elder women or mothers-in-law commit the actual act, almost always within the
first week of birth. In a conundrum of embarrassing coincidences for the
government, SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation) declared
1990 as the Year of the Girl Child and 1991-2000 as her Decade too, at a time
when a woman was the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu.
The
administration generally ended up being at defensive loggerheads with the media
over the “discovery” and critical coverage of what came to be categorized
under “Death by Social Causes”. In the Konganapuram Block records of
1990-91, 151 female infant deaths were attributed under this heading, as opposed
to the figure of 19 for male babies.
How
to Stop It?
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The Indian Council for Child Welfare has focused on the socio-economic development of females
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Legal
action to prevent female feticide/infanticide included the Prenatal Diagnostic
Techniques (Regulation and Prevention of Misuse) Act in 1994, which aimed at
restricting the uses of technology to detect only genetic abnormalities in the
unborn infant. It is worth noting that while the feminist agenda supports the
right of a woman to abortion, it draws a clear line when it comes to sex
selective abortion, indisputably a gender discriminatory crime.
Whatever
else media attention did or did not achieve, it drew essential focus to the
issue. There are over 30 different organizations in Madurai and about 25 in
Salem that are tackling the problem as a key piece in the larger picture of
rural development, health, education and institutional care.
Many
independent organizations now network to pool funds and share data, either
informally as in the case of the loose coalitions Kurinji and COPFI
(Coalition for Prevention of Female Infanticide) or more vocally as with the
SIRD (Society for Integrated Rural Development) whose successful CASSA (Campaign
Against Sex Selective Abortion) has become an umbrella organization demanding
that the declining juvenile female sex ratio find a place in the Assembly
elections’ agenda across party lines.
The
Indian Council for Child Welfare (ICCW) has focused on socio-economic
development of the females. Role models such as one trained woman blacksmith
running a foundry and another a bicycle repair shop serve as sustained
inspiration and guidance for the weaker others that are still discriminated
against.
Gender
sensitization of the community through interactive street theatre sangams,
and monitoring, guiding and counseling “high risk” mothers (who already have
one surviving girl child) are a few of the many activities that are having slow
but sure success. NGOs are also working with village elders or the panchayat
by approaching them privately and speaking up for persecuted women before a case
comes up for hearing and even providing temporary care to abandoned babies and
encouraging the families to spare something for their care. In addition,
grassroots demonstrations and activism raising slogans against infanticide have
been ongoing efforts to curb something which is too deeply entrenched to coerce.
In
fact, most NGO agencies shun media attention that only serves to drive a wedge
in carefully cultivated relationships which address deeply personalized issues
on the basis of mutual trust.
The
girl child is still dying too young, often even before she is born. She has no
voice nor any protection but in an ode to her right to survive, she is still
heard and defended.
References
:
‘Death
by Social Causes’ by Elizabeth Francina Negi
‘Watering
the Neighbour’s Plants’ by Sarada Natarajan
‘The
Unborn Girl Child’ by M.Bhuvaneswari
Lalitha
Sridhar is
a Chennai-based freelance journalist keenly interested in development issues.
Your emails will be forwarded to her by contacting the editor at: ScienceTech@islam-online.net
