Children are God’s most beautiful creation. January 24th is celebrated as National Girl Child Day to create awareness on the importance of girl child. In 2008, the Ministry of Women and Child Development initiated National Girl Child Day to promote the eradication of the gender discrimination faced by girls. Women and men are equally responsible for the survival of the human race.
In India the population of girls has been decreasing. It’s a common practice in India where people abort or kill girl child on birth. But, they should be given equal opportunity, and respect and opportunity to go ahead in life. We need to understand that girls are our fortune. Socio-economic empowerment of women is essential to make informed decisions and for mindset change. A healthy male-female ratio is a social need. While female foeticide is bad, the fact that millions of girls are “missing” in India has profound implications. A stronger law to deal with those resorting to sex-selective abortions needs to be enacted. The reasons for high number of incidents of female foeticide in India are a deep-rooted traditional son preference, dowry practice and concern for safety of the girl child and exploitation and abuse of women and girl child. To curb female foeticide and improve the sex ratio, a multi-pronged strategy that includes legislative measures, advocacy, awareness generation and programmes for socio-economic empowerment of women is needed. Female foeticide has grown. Although the media and the government have made attempts to highlight the negative impact of pre-natal sex identification and selective abortion, the practice continues. For saving girl child the government has launched Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao (Save the girl child) initiative.
There’s a huge deficit of women because families fear the cost of raising a daughter. It is a commonly practiced tradition (despite being outlawed) that the bride’s family pays a large sum of money to the groom’s family at the wedding. Women are not seen as bread-winners or allowed to inherit wealth like men in some States. Sex-selection is spreading to rural areas as the technology gets cheaper and enforcement of the law remains ineffectual. The imbalance in sex ratio may increase violence, including rape. With many men remaining unmarried, prostitution will increase substantially. Media exposes of doctors providing sex-selection services and offering to abort girls are commonplace, but they have little impact. Doctors and radiologists conducting, or soliciting parents for sex determination tests can be imprisoned up to five years and fined up to Rs 50,000. Despite the PC & PNDT Act, the conviction rate is low and the selection of male child before conception and female foeticide continue.
Despite rising levels of education, gender awareness and stringent pro-women laws, change has been slow and violence against women is increasing. Visionary leadership, stringent implementation of laws and a united effort to discourage dowry are needed. Educational programmes encouraging parents to view daughters as no less valuable than sons need to be mounted. It’s time to launch a campaign to promote female child birth rate. A girl child deserves a life and should be respected like others.
