INDIA: Campaign launched to stop female infanticide
Updated
In recent days India has been shaken by several horrific cases of alleged female infanticide. Many Indian families still regard a daughter as a financial burden because of the dowry that must be paid to her husband's family when she marries, and there's also a widespread preference for sons. The Indian government is now cranking up an education campaign aimed at eradicating the deliberate killing of girl babies and foetuses.
Presenter: Sonja Heydeman
Speakers: President of the Indian Medical Association, Dr Ajay Kumar
HEYDEMAN: Thirty bags stuffed with body parts of female foetuses and newly born babies have been found in a dry well near a private clinic in the eastern Indian state of Orissa. In another case a two-day old baby girl was found alive in a grave in southern India after allegedly being buried by a family member who wanted to avoid the cost of raising her. President of the Indian Medical Association Dr Ajay Kumar says these cases are not unique and have prompted a widespread prevention campaign.
KUMAR: We have ourselves started a campaign in this country on a large scale and the slogan is "Steal the girl child steal the country", and through that when we are just having a lot of public awareness programs taking out big processions with playcards and all, making public aware through the press we are trying to tell people that it is unacceptable. And we are also say that if you catch any doctor or any clinic doing this please inform the authorities, so that these black sheeps are taken to task.
HEYDEMAN: Pressure to produce a dowry remains the motivation for many families, however Dr Ajay says the practice stems from the "son psychology" that drives the quest to have male offspring.
KUMAR: I must have a son, son will carry my name, son will take care of the family, son will look after this, when I grow old my son will look after me. These are the psychologies still there in rural India. Where will they get money for the dowry, these are the psychologies which work.
HEYDEMAN: The Medical Association Chief says despite laws banning sex determination testing the practice remains common. He says the people accessing the scans can be surprising.
KUMAR: And let me tell you the people who talk in public, the social reformers, these people in society who are supposed to be protectors of the law, I'm not going to go into further detail, they talk in public something else, but when it comes to their own families they go and insist that the doctor will do (selective abortion) for me. And they have got such nuisance value in society that if the doctor is not doing it they create problems for him. So that is one group you see, and the women, they are themselves women and they don't want girl children, the mother-in-law and all that, the whole family goes together and they bribe the doctor. They bribe, they pay them high money just for this information.
HEYDEMAN: Action is being taken against doctors performing illegal procedures, and Dr Kumar says the offence is being taken seriously.
KUMAR: Once they are found guilty their license to practice in modern system in this country is taken away automatically by the Medical Council of India. Whereas the legal issue, their punishment is I think a few years of jail.
HEYDEMAN: The government says around ten million girls have been killed by their parents either before or immediately after birth over the past 20 years. The flow-on effect is that the gender ratio in the country is now one-thousand males to 900 females. Dr Kumar says the education of women remains the number one indicator that whether the practice will continue.
KUMAR: There are two states which are very wealth, in this country, called Punjab and Haryana. They're next to Delhi, and they're adjacent to each other. If you look at the figures there the female sex is more educated in Punjab, thus the female infanticide rate is much lower there. In Haryana, next door, female infanticide rate is higher because women are uneducated. So that is also a very important factor.
