Gendercide Petitions
After the airing of the show 20/20, petitions to demand an end to female gendercide in India were created. Please sign and forward.
‘Anti-sex selection Act unequal to curb foeticide’
‘Anti-sex selection Act unequal to curb foeticide’
Of 61 cases filed against medical practitioners in Delhi under the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act, 18 have been disposed of without subjecting the doctors to any rigorous legal checks and scrutiny. “Disposal” primarily meant the complainants withdrawing the cases.
Sharing her perspective at an interaction here on Wednesday, Bijaylakshmi Nanda, member of the State Supervisory Board, attributed this weak response to improper implementation of the law. “The fact that the Board meets infrequently is a sign of the lack of commitment of the State.”
Citing the case of Dr. Mitu Khosla, the first woman complainant under the PC&PNDT Act in Delhi in 2005, Ms. Nanda said she was coerced by her marital family to undergo sex determination during pregnancy. When she refused to do so, she was cheated into undergoing an ultrasound by which the sex determination test was done. Mitu was then pressured to terminate her pregnancy but she left her marital home and moved to her parents’ house. She gave birth to twin daughters. After three years, when her in-laws and husband refused to accept her back with her children, Mitu lodged a complaint under the PC&PNDT Act. But she was disappointed that the Act and the publicity on the issue had done very little to change the mindsets of the implementing authorities. Mitu is still fighting her case.
There has been a steep decline in child sex ratio in the country over the last three decades — from 962 in 1981 to 914 in 2011. Since 2001, there has been an overall decrease in the number of children aged 0-6. The decline of the girl child has grown to an unsustainable level during 2001-2011. Especially so in Rajasthan, where it was 1,46, 682, while the male decline in the last decade was a mere 596.
‘All Those Little Faces’: Elizabeth Vargas Explores India’s ‘Gendercide’
By Elizabeth Vargas
Six months ago, I traveled to India to see firsthand what the prime minister of that country calls a national shame. It is the systematic, widespread, shocking elimination of India’s baby girls. Some 50,000 female fetuses are aborted every month in India. Baby girls are often killed at birth, either thrown into rivers, or left to die in garbage dumps. Its estimated that one million girls in India “disappear” every year.
I traveled first to Delhi, where I met a woman who is a member of the privileged, educated class. Her name is Mitu and she is a pediatrician, married to a doctor. When she became pregnant, she said her husband’s family pressured her to have an illegal ultrasound to see if her twins were girls or boys.
There are clinics everywhere in India, offering ultrasounds. We walked down street after street and saw signs everywhere advertising ultrasound services. There are even technicians who pack portable ultrasounds and travel to villages offering their services. The dirty little secret is that many couples use the ultrasound to find out the sex of their baby. If they find it’s a girl, hundreds of thousands of mothers-to-be abort the fetus. 50,000 girl fetuses are aborted every month in India. It is a staggering number. And it has created whole villages where there are hardly any women. We went to one such village in the province of Haryana. Everywhere we looked, we saw boys, young men, old men, but very, very few women. It was unsettling, especially because we knew this was not some freak of nature, but a result of the deliberate extermination of girls.
It is a country with a female president and where men revere female goddesses. And yet, India is far from a haven for women.
According to current estimates, Indian men outnumber women by nearly 40 million. That startling gender gap, activists say, is the result of gendercide.
Nearly 50,000 female fetuses are aborted every month and untold numbers of baby girls are abandoned or murdered.“It’s the obliteration of a whole class, race, of human beings. It’s half the population of India,” said women’s rights activist Ruchira Gupta of Apne Aap Women Worldwide.
Why is there such deadly discrimination against girls? Part of the answer is money. Girls are a financial burden to their parents, who must pay expensive dowries to marry them off. The dowry is a cultural tradition and the single biggest reason Indians prefer boys.
When an Indian woman gives birth to a baby boy, it is an occasion for jubilation, said women’s rights activist Gita Aravamudan, author of the book, “Disappearing Daughters.”.
Mother Says She Was Tortured to Abort Twin Girls
Those seeking to maintain the status quo, meanwhile, have been aggressive.
Mitu Khurana, 34, a pediatrician and a mother trying to fight the system, said she’s faced death threats for the lawsuit she has filed against her husband and her husband’s family.
Khurana said her parents-in-law tricked her into eating a cake made with eggs, knowing that she was allergic to eggs. She had to go to the emergency room and at the hospital, where, Khurana said, an ultrasound determined that she was pregnant with twin girls. (Watch an interview with Mitu Khurana here.)
Mom Sues In-Laws, Claims Abortion Pressure
Mitu Khurana, a pediatrician, says her husband and his family tortured her.
Gender Discourse
Gender Discourse on Loksabha t.v. on declining sex ratios
Aam Admi khas pehal
Aam Admi khas pehal on lok sabha t.v. featuring Dr Mitu Khurana speaking on implementation (lack of) of P.N.D.T act resulting in more than 7000 female foeticides in India on a daily basis.
South Asia Wired – India’s missing daughters
South Asia Wired – India’s missing daughters
While India’s economy and education rates grow, some backward practices live on. This year’s census showed that Indian families still prefer sons over daughters. In wealthy, urban areas, many more boys than girls are born.
The Pre Conception Pre Natal Diagnostic Techniques Act from 1994 was established to put an end to the practice of sex selective abortion. But after all these years only one woman has been brave enough to use it.
Mitu Khurana, a pediatrician from New Delhi, is currently fighting her in-laws for the custody of her twin daughters. Even though Khurana claims her husband and his family tried everything to prevent the girls from being born.
Listen to Mitu’s story on this week’s South Asia Wired. Just click here to listen.
Support A Mother, Save Her Daughters
Support A Mother, Save Her Daughters
Mitu Khurana is a doctor by profession and is also an activist by choice. But many know her as a mother who has tirelessly fought for the survival of her two daughters. Post marriage, Dr. Mitu Khurana’s life came to a halt when her in-laws constantly harassed her for dowry. Later on, Mitu’s in-laws in connivance with her husband who also is a doctor demanded that Mitu abort the two female fetuses that she was carrying. Mitu’s husband and her in-laws ruthlessly and relentlessly compelled Mitu to either kill her unborn babies or put them for adoption. During pregnancy, Mitu had been constantly victimized and terrorized to change her decision of bearing her two little daughters. After invariable humiliation, physical abuse, and debasement of her dignity, Dr. Mitu Khurana went public about her atrocities. She filed a case against her husband and in-laws under the PC-PNDT (Pre Conception & Pre natal Diagnostic Technique) act. Since then, Mitu Khurana’s case has glared much media publicity and her story has been a marked column in several newspapers and magazines in India. However, amid the blazing uproar in the Indian society against female infanticide and sex selective abortions, Mitu’s mayhem remains forgotten. Her turmoil and trepidation to protect her daughters awaits a firm resolution and hope not only from Indian law enforcement authorities and the judicial system, or from the people of India, but from anyone who pledges their allegiance to end a vehement crime, such as killing the girl child.
Today, Mitu’s little daughters are nurtured in Mitu’s fervency with unconditional love. They are growing up in an environment where girls are not feared, but treated fair and embraced with a dream. As auspicious they may have been to Mitu’s fight for her right, the little girls are also opportune to be born to a mother who has devoted her life and courage to a fecund cause. Mitu’s daughters have gifted her with a belief that when life is stormed with the unknown, one’s timidity turns into tenacity. In this hurricane of emotions, Mitu’s daughters have become her sole anchors that firmly hold the harbor of her life. Mitu’s little girls have inspired her to survive a violent storm since the day the girls were conceived. From that moment, the little girls’ lives have intertwined with Mitu’s life and her endurance to evolve out of insanity and shenanigans of her in-laws and husband. However, Mitu yet again faces a threat, an intention full of deceit that may even be misleading the Indian judicial system. The court has awarded Mitu’s husband the visitation rights of the children whom he desperately desired to kill in the embryonic stage, and subsequent to their birth never showed any interest in parenting them. A visitation right to the father of the children may also encourage visits from Mitu’s in-laws who nearly beat her to death and starved her while she was carrying the babies. Media reports suggest that Mitu’s in-laws have neither shown interest in loving and accepting the little girls as their granddaughters, nor have they ever shown any kindness and respect for Mitu. If this is the grudge that Mitu’s in-laws and her husband still carry against Mitu and her daughters, then the jurisdiction may be putting Mitu’s daughters’ innocent lives into jeopardy and, thus making Mitu more vulnerable.
It seems any contact of the little ones with their father and Mitu’s in-laws may expose the kids to the risk of emotional abandonment. It may even lead to the chances of child abuse or neglect. In the given scenario of the harassment that Mitu has been put through, the potential harm that was plotted against the kids while they were in the womb and after their birth, and the evidence of a forged ultrasound on Mitu during her pregnancy proves that little girls would be best served and protected in Mitu’s custody only. Mitu’s case is an ordeal that many Indian women face being born and raised into a patriarchal society. Her story, however, is an inspiration of beating all the odds that surround the enthusiasm of her little girls. Mitu is a hero whose story is yet another chapter in the lives of those women who have survived at the cost of greed, treachery, and abuse, all that a girl is thrust upon when she brings values, ideals, and education in her marriage instead of ‘dowry.’ If Mitu loses her battle, we shall all loose our fight against a social evil. Eventually we shall loose hope on a nation, which is of the people, by the people, and for the people. Mitu’s sacrifice for her daughters is priceless and her appeal is to all those people who see a Mitu in them who constantly tussles till the last hopeful breath. If Mitu fails in her endeavor to save her daughters, a nation would fail and that ultimately would be a miscarriage of justice.
For further information on Dr. Mitu Khurana’s case, refer
http://barbararaisbeck.wordpress.com/. If you read this post and believe that Mitu has not been served justice, please support her cause and back her up with picketing at your level and spread the word. Perhaps that would be a foundation to an action.
Copyright (c) 2010-2011 Dharbarkha.blogspot
Born dead
Despite Bangalore emerging as a cosmopolitan city, its sex-ratio continues to be skewed against the girl child, write Sandeep Moudgal & Chethan Kumar
Bangalore, the City of sobriquets, has for long ensured its denizens a lifestyle that is the envy of most other cities. But lurking behind the glamour and sheen of a city whose stupendous strides have seen many wanting to make it their home, is a shame so dubious that even barbaric times of yore pale into insignificance.
At a time when gender discrimination is a strict no no, and there is much talk about the equality of sexes, Bangalore presents a sorry picture of itself, when it comes to giving the girl child her due. And here’s why: according to the latest UNICEF report, while as many as 7,000 cases of female foeticide have been recorded in the country, Bangalore records a dismal ratio of 908 girl children for every 1,000 male children. This only proves that the city is still living in the dark ages. The technical and economic strides that have put it on the global map notwithstanding.
This comes at a time when, as per provisional numbers under Census 2011, the average child sex ratio has fallen drastically to 914 females for every 1,000 males in the country as compared to 921 in 2001.
Mitu’s story
Of course, there are a few cases that have been saved. Guddu and Paari, now six, were among the fortunate few saved by their mother, Mitu Khurana, from being meted out a ‘death sentence’ when still in the womb.
Thanks to Mitu, a paediatrician, their stories of survival have been recorded from the day of birth, as part of a legal battle between their parents, the first individual case registered under the Pre-conception & Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act, 1994.
Asked to undergo an abortion after being tricked into going through an ultrasound to determine the sex of the foetus, Mitu fled from the harassing in-laws and husband, filed for separation and later lodged a complaint against her in-laws, along with the hospital which aided in determining the sex of the foetus.
“I took up the issue of female foeticide for the sake of my children as I did not want my daughters to go through the same ordeal as me,” says Khurana.
Despite a three-year struggle seeking justice, the judiciary has failed her, Mitu adds.
“There is absolutely no regard for the laws of this land. It appears that the laws are made to accommodate only the rich,” laments a distraught Khurana.
Throwing up her arms, the 35-year-old Delhiite now believes that she is ill-equipped to continue with the struggle alone. “I am feeling inadequate to fight the battle on my own. I need help and support,” she cries out.
As if driving a nail in Khurana’s desperation coffin is the harsh reality that Dr Vasundhara Bhoopathi, member, PC & PNDT Committee in Karnataka, speaks of. There has been a marked increase in sex determination cases in Bangalore urban. “Despite being a city with a burgeoning middle class and educated class, the general attitude towards women has not changed,” she said.
Dr Bhoopathi claimed that there has been a higher degree of caution which is being practiced by citizens to avoid being questioned under the PC-PNDT act.
“These days, parents who wish to identify the sex of the foetus ‘request’ the doctors to conduct sex determination on the pretext of finalising the colours for the baby’s room. If the doctor says it is pink, then the foetus is a girl. If he says blue, then it is a boy,” she revealed.
In Bangalore urban, the committee, formulated as per the Central Government rules and regulations to monitor sex determination rackets, has conducted 200 visits between 2002 and November 2010 and issued notices to 20 hospitals in the city.
However, instead of acting as a deterrent, committee members claim that the lack of convictions has only seen female foeticide continue unchallenged in the state. “With legal battles taking a minimum of two to three years to close, mothers or witnesses in sex determination cases turn hostile, resulting in little or no conviction rates,” said Dr Bhoopathi.
It has been 15 years since the PC-PNDT Act of 1994 was enforced in the country to eradicate female foeticide. Yet, little has been achieved by the Centre or the State in eradicating the crime.
Mothers like Mitu Khurana are just isolated instances when a woman breaks free from societal compulsions. However, those like the Khuranas have not been able to ensure the general perceptions that good education and ‘advocacy’ per se, would wipe out such social evil practices.
“Advocacy alone cannot eradicate female foeticide. We need a stronger enforcing will and a faster judiciary to end the violation of this basic human right. Why should any child be devoid of its rights, be it a girl or a boy?” asks the mother of two, hoping for a better future for her daughters.
Will Khurana’s distressing call be lost in the wilderness of social apathy and inadequacy of the country’s long-drawn judicial system or will the likes of Guddu and Paari live to etch their own interesting tales? Only time will tell. For now though, thousands of Guddus and Paaris may or may not be handed god’s gift of life because their mothers will be forced to suppress their individual will against the larger dictates of a male-driven society.
