Killing Daughters In Order to Survive

A few days before India's 60th Independence Day celebrations, government officials in Punjab, one of the wealthiest states of India and also the birthplace of Bhangra music, discovered dozens of female fetuses dumped in an unused well in a town called Patran.

A quack, formerly serving in the Indian army, and along with his wife, was running an illegal maternity clinic where, assisted by a team of nurses, he 'helped' expectant parents determine the sex of their fetuses and aborted the female ones if the parents so desired. The fetuses were secretly thrown in the well.

Allegedly, this killing of would-be girls had been carried out for a number of years.

Killing female embryos is an unacknowledged practice in Indian society. Everyone knows it is a crime and perhaps morally wrong, too. There are many who do not fall for it, but still it is acceptable. Just be quiet about it, please.

It is also true that many Indians love their daughters as much as their sons, yet the birth of a girl is an undesirable occasion in many families. Girls are seen as a burden on the household, a bundle of shame, and a thankless responsibility. They are perceived as offspring who, unlike the sons, would not carry on the family's name. Instead, a great amount of money would have to be arranged for their wedding dowries, which would benefit the homes of their husband's families.

The main reason for the widespread female foeticide and the continuing prevalence of female infanticide in parts of India was the dowry system, which although long prohibited by law, continues to play a significant role in Indian society. Dowries and wedding expenses regularly run to more than a million rupees ($35,000) in a country where the average civil servant earns about 100,000 rupees ($3,500) a year. Added to this the low status of women in rural India, where they perform the menial tasks of the family such as carrying water and firewood and seeing to feeding the animals, and it is clear where the roots of the discrimination spring. About 41 percent of Indian girls under the age of 14 do not attend school, said the report.

The oleander plant yields a bright, pleasant flower, but also a milky sap that, if ingested, can be a deadly poison. It’s one of the methods families use to kill newborn girls in the Salem District of Tamil Nadu, a part of India notorious for female infanticide

According to a recent report by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) up to 50 million girls and women are missing from India’ s population as a result of systematic gender discrimination in India.

Original links to the materials:

http://rupeenews.com/2008/04/15/indian-girl-infanticide-female-foeticide-1-million-girls-killed-before-or-after-birth-per-year/