THE HIDDEN GENOCIDE
On this International Women’s Day we need to reflect on the ongoing genocide of girls before birth. Five million girls were eliminated over the period 1986-2001 because of foetal sex determination done by thousands of unethical doctors. And the rate of extermination continues to increase after Census 2001. Sex determination and sex selective abortion started in an Amritsar clinic in 1979 and has now grown into a 1000 crore country wide industry!
In recent years, the misuse of ultrasound has reached remote tribal areas of Rajasthan, inaccessible villages of Bundelkhand and emerged even in parts of India where women were better treated, such as Assam, Kerala and the Kashmir Valley. Thus, a million girls will be eliminated every year in the coming four years because the nation’s efforts and responses have been grossly inadequate in restraining the promotion of foetal sexing. China as of 2000 Census was eliminating one million girls annually but present trends suggest that India is likely to overtake China in less than a decade! Son preference has become daughter hatred in India in the recent decades due to the widespread legitimization of this form of violence against women. In the early 1980s, families in Punjab who had two or more girls went in for sex determination; by 1995 some families in Punjab, Haryana, Delhi resorted to the practice in the first pregnancy itself - they wanted a son in the first delivery.
In 1994, Parliament responded to the misuse of prenatal diagnostic techniques by enacting the PNDT Act. However, the Government did not implement the law. Further the multi-national ultrasound manufacturers took advantage of the economic liberalization of the early nineties and started production of ultrasound in India by mid nineties. The aggressive marketing of these machines coupled with easy availability of cheap credit for purchase made scanning available in many parts of the country. Machines were sold to anybody who wanted to purchase them. Saheli, Delhi has documented the boom in ultrasound scanners relative to other forms of medical equipment. Of course ultrasound has multiple uses but both practice information and the continued decline of sex ratios at birth reveal that foetal sexing is a significant use of ultrasound.
The Supreme Court directed the Governments to implement the PNDT Act in May 2001. Later, the Parliament amended the law to make it more stringent. Manufacturers could sell ultrasound machines only to registered clinics. There was a decline in sales of machines in 2002 and the subsequent increase was less than the anticipated volumes. The registration of Clinics has increased from 600 to 30,000 since May 2001. However, the regulation of ultrasound scanning has yet to be done. The efforts in Hyderabad in 2004-6 by Mr. Arvind Kumar and more recently by Dr. Agnani in Shivpuri have demonstrated that the law can be implemented and that medical audit can restrain the misuse of ultrasound.
The Union Health Ministry has to be proactive in stopping female foeticide. The Secretary, Mr. Dayal is a man of high integrity but he has not given this issue adequate priority. Over the last six months not a single visit of the National Inspection and Monitoring Commission has taken place despite millions of violations of the Act. This is a serious breach of commitment made by the Government to the Supreme Court. The Ministry surrendered one crore rupees of the meager funds allocated to the PNDT Cell in this budget year! The decision to change the Appropriate Authority from the Chief Medical Officer to the District Collector is merely cosmetic.
Changing one official by another without commitment to implement the law will not help. A change in the present context, where a few Districts in Punjab, Haryana etc., follow and harass pregnant women instead of regulating scan clinics, will increase the risk of victimizing women. Making Advisory Councils functional is more important than tinkering with the Authority. Varsha Deshpande, of the Satara Advisory Council has set an example how to implement the Act since 2003. In 2005, the Health Ministry released full page advertisements calling female foeticide a sin. Converting crimes into sins is dangerous as it will only fuel further decline in sex ratios. There are attempts by some politicians to limit abortion as a means to stop female foeticide. Such anti-women actions would endanger women’s health though it may be acceptable to religious fundamentalists.
The efforts of the media have certainly contributed to the increased public discourse on this issue over the past seven years. Today, reports of female foetuses found in drains or dug from dry wells or floating in lakes or eaten by dogs are headline news. And there have been stories on the consequences like trafficking of women for marriage; emergence of polyandry etc. Meena Sharma and Mr. Shaktawat of Sahara Television exposed 100 Doctors involved in these crimes in Rajasthan and adjacent States. This spurred a major public campaign and, so far, seven Doctors have been suspended by the Rajasthan Medical Council.
The Government of India should set a target date by which the country will have balanced sex ratios at birth. China has declared its intention at the highest political level to achieve this by 2010. Over the last four decades, our five year plans have had targets for population control. The coming plan, which talks about inclusion, needs to give a fair deal to women by abandoning fertility targets and replacing it with solid commitments to restore sex ratio at birth. There has to be official recognition that small families are increasingly achieved by eliminating girls. Posterity will never forgive us if we do not act today - to prevent becoming the country with the largest number of girls being eliminated before birth.
Slightly edited version of the article written by Sabu M George for Times of India: 8th March 2007
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