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Punjab has the worst sex ratio in the country. Female foeticide is at an alarming high. The worst culprits are the affluent.
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Kulwinder Kaur Housewife: "I have two daughters and my mother-in-law is threatening to get another wife for her son if I don’t have a boy. I got an abortion done last year when the scan showed it was a female foetus. This time I have been lucky."
Simran College Lecturer: "I have one girl and cannot afford to have another daughter. It’s so difficult to marry them off as boys demand hefty dowries. I have undergone five abortions at aprivate nursing home as all of them were female foetuses. I may not be able to conceive again."
Kashmiri Devi Housewife: "I’ve two daughters, after which I had four abortions because the foetuses were female. Now, I want to have a son of my own so that he can take care of us in our old age."
Satinder Kaur Wife of a landed farmer: "I have one daughter, and I know that if I don’t have a son soon my status in the family will come down. Femicide is not an issue in our family. I got my last pregnancy aborted, it helped me to limit our family size. Otherwise I could be saddled with a whole lot of girls until I get a boy."
Satnam Singh Sarpanch, Nai Majara: "No matter what people might say, at heart everyone wants a son. Imagine the plight of a couple who has two daughters in a row. Life in Punjab is cruel for those with too many daughters."
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Manjit Kaur with her husband, daughter, mother-in-law who had an abortion at the nursing home
Kumar suspects the situation in the four towns of the district, still to be surveyed, would be much worse because of greater accessibility to scanning centres and clinics. Villages like Sekhopur, Kador, Sultanpur, Sajawalpur, Jatpura, Kherevewal and many others like them, all with a sex ratio below 700:1000, are a sad reflection of a chilling trend which, despite the 'efforts' of the government machinery to enforce the Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex Selection) (PNDT) Act, refuses to ebb.
Students at a rally against female foeticide in Nawanshahr
A street performance on female foeticide
Even with the kind of abysmal figures which Nawanshahr has turned up, the district has some good news to report too. The entire state is watching with wonder the results of the rigorous anti-female foeticide drive undertaken by the district administration. Results of strict enforcement have begun coming in places like Khothran already. According to a government assessment in 2004, the ratio in the 0-6 years group in this village was 787:1000. Strict monitoring had increased it to 904:1000 by the end of 2005. Satisfying yes, but Kumar feels that even the better villages cannot be taken for granted because the socio-economic conditions which led to the problem in the first place remain. As Channan Singh at Nai Majara says: "It's all very well for the DC to launch a campaign, but will he help us to marry our daughters when the time comes? Boys nowadays ask for huge dowries. If it's an nri groom the amount doubles."
The emergence of the two-child norm and even the trend of one male child preferred by rural landed families nowadays are other factors encouraging female foeticide. Dr Renuka Dagar, a senior fellow with the Chandigarh-based Institute of Development and Communication, studied the phenomenon in 2003 and found that in one village of Bhatinda district, 40 per cent of the couples over 35 years of age had only one offspring, a male. With land holdings shrinking, people don't want too many children or even too many sons. Ensuring that the one child that they have is a male, she points out, is one more reason for the increase in female foeticide.
A couple at the Baba Budha shrine near Jalandhar seeking a male child
It's not surprising to find that the overall sex ratio for Punjab is dipping further. According to data from the latest sample registration system of the office of the registrar general, the overall sex ratio at birth (considered a more accurate indicator of female foeticide) for Punjab is now 776:1000 (in 2001 it was 793:1000). In Nawanshahr district alone, the ratio fell from 810:1000 in 2001 to 775:1000 in 2004. Again, a state-wise analysis done recently by an Indo-Canadian team, which appeared in the latest issue of British medical bible Lancet, has found that if the first birth in a family is a female child, the figures for Punjab show a dismal sex ratio of 614:1000. This gets worse in urban areas, where it goes down to 560:1000. Described as the first systematic and scientific study on female foeticide, it was carried out by Prabhat Jha, formerly of the World Bank who is now with St Michael's Hospital, University of Toronto, and Dr Rajesh Kumar of the Post-Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research in Chandigarh. Dr Rajesh Kumar observes that their study reveals a cruel paradox: "Since our study shows higher incidence of female foeticide in well-off and better educated segments of society, we feel that Punjab registers the lowest sex ratio because of the relative prosperity of people here. This signifies that as prosperity levels go up, the problem will worsen in the years to come."
As for enforcement, out of the 77 cases registered in the last four years under the PNDT Act, there have been only two convictions so far—measure that against the estimated 10 million foeticides in 20 years. Health department officials say convictions are difficult to come by because there are no complainants. Consequently, evidence is difficult to get because both the patient and doctor have a nexus. A convenient nexus, which is fast catapulting Punjab towards sociological disaster.