The tragic end of three-month-old Neha Afreen, who was allegedly battered by her father in Karnataka, is a blot on the collective conscience of society and governments across India. If you thought Bengaluru district was any different and more progressive than districts further away, in the state's interiors, think again. The child sex ratio here too has fallen from 943 to 941 over the last decade. While the falling ratio is alarming enough, it is also lower than the average child sex ratio of 944 in the country. Karnataka High Court Chief Justice Vikramajit Sen expressed concern over the death of battered baby Neha Afreen while suo motu hearing a Public Interest Litigation on the increasing deaths of children due to malnutrition in the State. “Parents harming their own children is a matter of serious concern. Children were treated as treasure, but look at baby Neha’s plight,” the CJ observed.
Afreen’s is neither the first nor will it be the last such case. Sometime back, the death of another battered baby girl (Falak) caused a sensation but it was forgotten soon after. This is because the problem is endemic in nature and there is no region or community free from the virus of female foeticide. Many factors come into play to explain this: infanticide, abuse and neglect of girl children. The decline is largely due to the increased availability of antenatal sex screening. Use of technology like ultrasound to determine the sex of the unborn child has been banned by law but, only a few violators of the law have so far been punished. The government has been forced to admit that its strategy has failed to put an end to female foeticide.
Until 30 years ago, India's sex ratio was "reasonable". Then in 1974, Delhi's prestigious All India Institute of Medical Sciences came out with a study which said sex-determination tests were a boon for Indian women. It said they no longer needed to produce endless children to have the right number of sons, and it encouraged the determination and elimination of female foetuses as an effective tool of population control. By late 80s, every newspaper in Delhi was advertising for ultrasound sex determination. Clinics from Punjab were boasting that they had 10 years' experience in eliminating girl children and inviting parents to come to them. The results of the dangerous phenomenon are already visible in states like Punjab and Haryana, where shortage of girls compels marriageable men to look for brides elsewhere. The government woke up quite late in 1994,and came up with the Pre-Natal Determination Test (PNDT) Act which outlawed sex-selective abortion. In 2004, it was amended to include gender selection even at the pre-conception stage.
At the all-India level, there are only 914 girls for every 1,000 boys, according to the 2011 census. When Nobel-laureate Amartya Sen wrote a watershed, nay prophetic, essay in ‘The New York Review of Books’ entitled ‘More Than 100 Million Women Are Missing’ in 1990, many questioned its basis. Interestingly, he concluded the essay paying tributes to the high status women enjoyed in Kerala. However, latest census figures show that female foeticide has caught up in the southern state too. Unless society as a whole realises the dangers of a womanless world and ends the murder in the womb, there will be more Afreens.
