Unfolding Tragedy of India's Disappearing Daughters

[Justin Joseph]

Riaz haq in his post gives same figure about China but single out India to bash show real intentions.

I think author is a severe case of wet dream syndrome about India.

He thinks every negative things about India and post trash in a defense forum.

 

[RiazHaq]

One of the reasons for India's accelerated rate of female feticide is the abuse of ultrasound technology to determine the gender of the unborn. The purveyors of the ultrasound business in every city, town and village of India entice parents by telling them to "spend 500 rupees now and save 50,000 rupees later.” The cost of the ultrasound scan is Rs. 500 and the required dowry for marrying daughters off exceeds Rs. 50,000.00.

And everywhere else, with the exception of Rajasthan, already low figures are continuing to slide. Even in Rajasthan, the proportion of girls is well below what should be the norm of around 950 girls born for every 1000 boys.

ActionAid has also found that girls are more likely to be born but less likely to survive in areas with more limited access to public health services and modern ultrasound technology. In rural Morena and Dhaulpur, deliberate neglect of girls, including allowing the umbilical cord to become infected, is used as a way to dispose of unwanted daughters.

Haq's Musings: Female Genocide Unfolding in India

 

[BATMAN]

Missing: 50 million Inidan girls
This article says educated indians are more in to girl killing, while uneducated and poor tend to keep the girl (perhaps cost issues)

 

[RiazHaq]

"A study of Tamil Nadu by the Community Service Guild of Madras similarly found that "female infanticide is rampant" in the state, though only among Hindu (rather than Moslem or Christian) families. "Of the 1,250 families covered by the study, 740 had only one girl child and 249 agreed directly that they had done away with the unwanted girl child. More than 213 of the families had more than one male child whereas half the respondents had only one daughter." (Malavika Karlekar, "The girl child in India: does she have any rights?," Canadian Woman Studies, March 1995.)"


Gendercide Watch: Female Infanticide

 

[RiazHaq]

The problems do not arise from legislative representation of women in India, but from social mindsets. The real tragedy is that Indian women suffer a thousand forms of discrimination.

Millions of girls die before they are even born – the stark foeticide, infanticide and dowry killing figures are testament to this. Girls that are lucky to make it into the world live a life of discrimination when it comes to nourishment, healthcare, education and opportunities for employment.

Despite laudable intentions, the Women’s Reservation Bill that passed with a thumping majority in India’s upper house is deeply flawed because of its pitch and delivery. Parties on either side of the political spectrum have joined hands to support the bill in order to appear politically correct, but at the expense of being reasonable.

As Jawed Naqvi has pointed out in Dawn, there is no proven linear relationship between the representation of women in parliament and their emancipation. Pakistan’s assembly has 22% female representation, he argues, more than double the figure in India. Yet Pakistan ranks near the bottom in most global rankings on women’s freedom and status. American women, on the other hand, have no reservations. Their seats in the United States Congress are won on merit alone. And they aren’t faring too poorly at all.

Haq's Musings: Women Reps to Close India's Gender Gap?

 

[RiazHaq]

At 23, Nirupama Pathak seemed to have seamlessly made the transition from her small home-town in Jharkhand to big city life. Read: Delhi journalist murdered: Honour killing?)

Supported by her parents, she arrived in Delhi to study journalism at one of the capital's premier institutes. There, she fell in love with a classmate, Priyabhanshu Ranjan. A job at one of India's best-known newspapers, the Business Standard, followed. On Facebook, she commented on political and personal issues. She was easy-going, unpretentious and helpful.

The roots that seemed to ground her rose quickly to strangle her. Nirupama was a Brahmin, her boyfriend a Kayastha. Where she came from, that was enough to stop everything.

Last week, Nirupama's family summoned her home, insisting that her mother, Sudha, was not keeping well. On Thursday night, Nirupama was found dead in her bedroom at her Jharkhand home. Her family said she had committed suicide by hanging herself. The post-mortem clearly spelled murder by asphyxiation. "There are no external injury marks on her, which means that she was probably pinned down by a few people and then smothered," said P Mohan, a surgeon in Nirupama's hometown of Koderma.

Her mother, Sudha, was arrested for her murder and sent to 14-day jail on Monday. Nirupama's father, Dharmendra, says though the family wasn't pleased with her relationship with Priyanshu, because he was from a different caste, he would never hurt his daughter. "You have to first look at your own caste, then you should look elsewhere... but we only advised her," he told NDTV, reiterating that his daughter's death was a suicide.

The crime shows yet again how 'honour killings' cannot be considered the curse of rural India where panchayats often order the execution of young couples who dare to cross caste borders. Nirupama's father worked at a bank, her brothers were PhDs, the family had helped Nirupama to move far from home to follow her dreams.

"I have not only lost my girlfriend and would-be wife... her parents have also killed me. When I last spoke with her, she asked me to forget her, she said 'they are not letting her come back', so I asked her who was stopping her, considering only her mother was at home. She told me that her brother's friend was also present, I should have asked her for his name, this was a mistake I made," says Priyabhanshu. (Watch: Nirupama's boyfriend speaks to NDTV)

Meanwhile, the National Commission for Women (NCW) has asked for the case to be handled by a fast-track court.

Journalist's mother arrested for alleged honour killing

 

[T-Rex]

Here's how the Economist puts the issue of "gendercide" in its recent issue: "For millions of couples, the answer is: abort the daughter, try for a son. In China and northern India more than 120 boys are being born for every 100 girls. Nature dictates that slightly more males are born than females to offset boys’ greater susceptibility to infant disease. But nothing on this scale".

Among the consequences of more boys than girls in society, the Economist story on female genocide points out rising social instability in parts of the developing world. It explains, "Throughout human history, young men have been responsible for the vast preponderance of crime and violence—especially single men in countries where status and social acceptance depend on being married and having children, as it does in China and India. A rising population of frustrated single men spells trouble."


Haq's Musings: Girl Feticide in Chinindia Cuts Population

Haq's Musings: Female Genocide Unfolding in India

Where are those champions of women's liberation? Where is the western media? Imagine this happening in a Muslim country and you'll see them beating the drum day and night!

 

[RiazHaq]

Where are those champions of women's liberation? Where is the western media? Imagine this happening in a Muslim country and you'll see them beating the drum day and night!

Unfortunately, most western rights activists are highly selective in expressing their moral outrage.

 

[chachachoudhary]

Mods please close this thread.

Every individual must look within before pointing fingers at others.

I can also start many threads on social problems in pakistan. However, I am more interested in constructive threads.

 

[Jagjit_Singh_Arora]

Unfolding great stories of pakistan sons. Who is going to write about them.


hint: kasab, faisal etc..

 

[Cityboy]

Riaz haq in his post gives same figure about China but single out India to bash show real intentions.

I think author is a severe case of wet dream syndrome about India.

He thinks every negative things about India and post trash in a defense forum.

ignore him. .lol. He is 24 hrs finding blog links for bashing.

 

[rubyjackass]

Thousands of Indian bloggers criticize the Indian system in an effort to make India better each day. Instead of starting at Riaz's flag why don't you take his blogs in spirit and recognize the good that comes out as he dedicates more bandwidth in it to India than even to his homeland. Talk only after you are not in a position to inspire such criticism.

 

[chachachoudhary]

After taking a stock of RiazHaq's musings, it is getting clearer to me.

Guys his intentions are not bad, not at all.

He is in fact admitting that his home country has passed the point of no return and he sees india as the only hope of the subcontinent and hence more concerned about its well being.

So, very rightly he is not wasting his time on writing or "musing" on his homeland's evils as it is a terminal case.

Sorry Mr. Haq for misunderstanding your posts. From now on, I hope people will take them constructively.

 

[RiazHaq]

Some highlights from the latest Superfreakonomics text:

A baby Indian girl who does grow into adulthood [i.e., who doesn't fall prey to selective abortion or infanticide] faces inequality at nearly every turn. She will earn less money than a man, receive worse health care and less education, and perhaps be subjected to daily atrocities. In a national health survey, 51 percent of Indian men said that wife-beating is justified under certain circumstances; more surprisingly, 54 percent of women agreed — if, for instance, a wife burns dinner or leaves the house without permission.

And:

Unfortunately, most [government and non-government aid] projects have proven complicated, costly, and, at best, nominally successful. A different sort of intervention, meanwhile, does seem to have helped. … It was called television.

And:

Rural Indian families who got cable TV began to have a lower birthrate than families without TV. (In a country like India, a lower birthrate generally means more autonomy for women and fewer health risks.) Families with TV were also more likely to keep their daughters in school, which suggests that girls were seen as more valuable, or at least deserving of equal treatment. (The enrollment rate for boys, notably, didn’t change.) … It appears that cable TV really did empower the women of rural India, even to the point of no longer tolerating domestic abuse. Or maybe their husbands were just too busy watching cricket.

Introducing the SuperFreakonomics Virtual Book Club: Meet Emily Oster - Freakonomics Blog - NYTimes.com

 

[RiazHaq]

Here's a PRB <a href="http://www.prb.org/Articles/2008/sexratioatbirth.aspx">report</a>that conflicts with Jensen and Oster:

A new study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reports on a sex ratio that favors boys among U.S.-born children in Indian, Korean, and Chinese families. Using the 1990 and 2000 decennial censuses, the study found that the ratio of male to female births is much higher if the first child is a girl and even higher, by as much as 50 percent, if the first two children are girls. The normal ratio of males to females at birth is 1.05:1. However, if the first child is a girl, the ratio increases to 1.17:1, and if the first and second children are girls, the ratio increases more dramatically to 1.51:1 in favor of boys. The authors note that this is not evident with white parents and that the trend among the base group was not evident in the 1990 census.

The phenomenon is not unique to Asian immigrants in North America. In 2007, an Oxford University study suggested a similar phenomenon among Indian-born mothers in both England and Wales. It found that the proportion of male to female newborns increased from 103 male births per 100 female births in the 1970s to 114.4 by the end of 2005.

The authors expect the sex ratio to move upward given the recent surge in immigration from Southeast Asia and the availability of new technology that makes sex determination possible within the first five weeks of pregnancy. New reproductive technologies used for sex selection such as embryo screening, sperm sorting, and blood tests have been marketed to Indian expatriates in the United States and Canada in recent publications such as India Abroad and The Indian Express.

Given the small size of the Asian-born population relative to the total U.S. population, the practice is unlikely to have major consequences on the national sex ratio at birth in the short term. However, the implication of such practices might have a profound effect beyond U.S. borders. Since 1994, laws have been in enacted in India banning the use of embryo screening, sperm sorting, and other methods for sex selection, although these are not always strictly enforced. Canada, the UK, China, and the Council of Europe's Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine have all outlawed and condemned any type of sex selection method. However, the U.S. fertility industry remains largely unregulated and American Society of Reproductive Medicine recommendations on the ethical use of the technology are largely ignored by practitioners.

Sex Ratio at Birth Deteriorating Among Asian Immigrants in the United States - Population Reference Bureau