This article was posted by Christian Today/India on Monday, February 6, 2012.

Unfortunately, “top down” legislation is at best extremely ineffective but this is where the most resources will be allocated because laws typically are in-acted to change actions. Just in the last few years, India as legislated 1) birth parent ID, 2) outlawed sex determination in ultrasounds and 3) restricted the adoption fees charged by the agencies to adoptive parents. Without exception, little if any change has occurred toward the killing of girls only the financial cost has increased significantly However, grassroots efforts, like our Prenatal and Newborn Care initiative is having significant impact on changing the cultural attitude of the Indian girl child from one of a liability to one of true value.

The country has the worst gender-based discrepancy in child mortality rates in the world.

Data from the United Nations shows that girls face an overwhelmingly greater risk of mortality than boys in India.

Statistics produced by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs show that India may be the worst place in the world to be born a girl. The case for this bold statement comes from the fact that an Indian girl-child below the age of five is 75 per cent more likely to die than her male counterpart.

The country has the worst gender-based discrepancy in child mortality rates in the world.

India’s situation remains different from that of its South Asian peers, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, where girls’ survival rates are better than boys’.

Globally, overall child mortality is falling, but India and China are not experiencing the same improvements in girls’ mortality occurring in other countries.

Girls are naturally more likely to survive infancy, given the same access to resources as boys. But, female child mortality in India has worsened over the past four decades. By the 2000s, only 56 male children died for every 100 females who died—the average in the developing world is 111 deaths of the boy-child.

In India, boys are favoured over girls, who represent a cost to their families in terms of dowries and weddings.

China, however, fares worse than India when it comes to infant mortality (deaths among children under the age of one). In China, 76 male infants die for every 100 females. While in India, 97 males infants die for every 100 females.

The World’s Women and Girls 2011 Data Sheet published by the Population Reference Bureau, presents projections indicating that while China and the rest of the world are expected to improve their skewed sex ratios between now and 2050, India’s will remain constant at 108 boys for every 100 girls. The natural rate is 105 boys for every 100 girls.

The UK’s Telegraph spoke to Ranjana Kumari of the Council for Social Research, who spoke about parents’ own discrimination against their daughters. Indian mothers, she said, breastfeed girls for a shorter length of time than they do boys for fear that extended breastfeeding will speed the age of puberty and the need for an expensive wedding.

Parents also wait longer to seek medical care for their daughters, whose survival is not as important as their sons, particularly in rural India. Experts have also pointed to female infanticide as another problem.

Women and girls make up 60 per cent of the world’s hungry. They are among the first people to go without when food is scarce. This affects their overall health and wellbeing, including immune vulnerability to diseases.

India has the second-largest population in the world. In less than 40 years it will surpass China as the world’s most populous nation with more than 1.6 billion inhabitants. But 900 million people—about 76 per cent of the population—live on less than $2 a day.

By Rupan Jain Nair (AFP). This is a reprint of an article first published in India (February 2012)
It is a good first step that Indians begin to understand the scope and depth of the problem of female infanticide, sex determination f(o)eticide and gender discrimination against the Indian girl child. Together we can find solutions to end this gendercide that may take the lives of up to 3 million girls each year in India.

Padma Kanwar Bhatti is the only girl in her noisy classroom of 22 boys, in Devda, a village in Rajasthan (AFP/File, Roberto Schmidt)

DEVDA, India — As the only girl in her noisy classroom of 22 boys, Padma Kanwar Bhatti is one defiant symbol of the toll exacted by India’s deadly preference for male children.

Padma, 15, lives with her parents and two elder brothers in Devda, a village of 2,500 residents in the Rajasthan state district of Jaisalmer, which has one of the worst female sex ratios in the country.

“There is no other girl in my class and there are very few girls in our village,” she says hesitantly.

Padma chooses to stare at her social science text book when asked why there are less girls and more boys in her village set in the barren lands of the Thar desert.

“Girls die,” she says in Marwari, the main language of Rajasthan.

Almost everyone in Devda and neighbouring villages acknowledges the reality of female infanticide, a crime based in ancient custom and continued today even as much of India experiences rapid economic and social change.

“We are crazy for boys. We mourn when girls are born,” says Rajan Singhi, a farmer in Devda and a father of two boys, who is proud of his long ancestry as a member of the warrior Bhatti Rajput clan.

In most cases the killing takes place within 24 hours of a baby’s birth and the crime is committed either by the mother or the midwife, he says.

“I have heard that people administer opium or thrust a small but heavy sack filled with sand or mustard seeds on the baby’s face. Many mothers do not breast feed their daughter, starving the child to death,” Singhi says.

Local historians believe infanticide in the region may have its roots in wars fought generations ago when Rajput Hindu clan elders chose the drastic step of killing their daughters to save them from rape by Muslim invaders.

The Muslim attackers would plunder Hindu villages, rape girls and throw them in the village wells.

“Unable to deal with the dishonour, the Rajputs chose to kill their daughters,” Umashankar Tyagi, a social historian in Jaipur, the state capital of Rajasthan, told AFP.

In peace time, the custom continued to thrive, Tyagi said, explaining that “the expense of dowries, illiteracy, poverty are the new justification for infanticide”.

Clan elders and state government officials say that just two Devda girls have had weddings in the village in the last 100 years.

The situation reflects a nationwide crisis in India, where the preference for boys is partly due to the key role that sons play in Hindu funeral ceremonies.

Other factors are the substantial — and illegal — dowries that a father must provide for his daughter’s new family at her wedding, and the fact that sons are often seen as breadwinners and daughters as financial burdens.

As many as half a million female foetuses are estimated to be aborted each year in India, according to a study by British medical journal The Lancet.

In Rajasthan, local administration and senior police officials say they are aware of the atrocities committed against female infants, but the authorities appear reluctant to intervene into private family lives.

“Infanticide is an open secret but it is next to impossible to prove the crime,” says Mamta Bishnoi, senior police officer of Jaisalmer district.

“Girls are buried in the desert and no one in the clan ever inquires about the newborn or mourns the loss,” says Bishnoi, adding “we cannot dig up the entire desert to hunt for the girls.”

The Jaisalmer district has one of the worst child gender ratios in India. It stands at 868 girls under six per 1,000 boys, compared with 914 girls per 1,000 boys across India, according to 2011 census data.

In Devda, women are relegated to the innermost chamber of the house, and can step out only for a visit to the temple.

They walk in pairs, covering their faces with bright coloured scarves like a screen, so that even the shadow of a man does not fall on them.

“I don’t send my daughter to the school because I don’t like idea of girls talking to male teachers,” says Bimla Devi Bhatti, a mother of two daughters.

“We have to give gold, silver, cash, vessels, beds, television sets, air coolers, clothes to the groom’s family and also arrange for a three-day village feast during a daughter’s wedding,” says Bhatti.

“We have to start saving for the dowry since the day a daughter is born. I will have to sell my land to get them married.”

In an attempt to end the killing, the state government has proposed to open a bank account for every girl child born in the state and deposit 25,000 rupees (500 dollars).

Once the girl turns 18, the government will gift her the amount to give the family a financial incentive to save their daughters.

“But this proposal is yet to be implemented,” says Yashveer Pokharan, who works in a private school in Devda. “Daughters here desperately need this financial support to survive.”

Any hope that the modernisation of Indian life could provide better prospects for the unborn girls of Devda may be misplaced.

Cheap prenatal sex-determination technology such as ultrasound scans and blood tests has only worsened the problem of female foeticide in India’s middle-class city suburbs.