From: bcsabha.kal...@gmail.com
To:
From: sjprashant...@gmail.com
To: sjprash...@gmail.com
THE GIRL CHILD AND THE GUJARAT MODEL
-Fr.
Cedric Prakash sj*
Some years ago several newspapers across
the country highlighted a report brought out by the United Nations Department
of Economic and Social Affairs (UN-DESA). The report contained data for 150
countries over forty years and had blatantly stated that “an Indian girl child
aged 1 to 5 years is 75% more likely to die than
an Indian boy, making this the worst gender differential in child mortality for
any country in the world”.
The above
mentioned report was released sometime in 2012. That very year, in the month of
May, Aamir Khan in his popular serial on social issues “Satyamev Jayate”
focussed on female foeticide – of how the female
unborn child was killed all across India.
As part of this well-researched serial was the case study of Amisha
Yagnik from Ahmedabad who had to undergo the nightmare of abortion after
abortion when her husband and in-laws forcibly had her tested and did away with
the foetus when it was found to be female.
Ultimately, she had to escape to her maternal home a few years ago to
give birth to her only child Kamya who is today eleven years old.
Naturally, the
story of Amisha created an uproar in the urban educated middle-class society of
Gujarat. Several TV channels also blacked out
the serial in Gujarat. However, the story of Amisha is not an
exception but the hard and stark reality of what is happening to the girl child
in Gujarat today. So when the Times of India
(Ed. Ahmedabad) on July 25th, 2013 headlined ‘Guj cities killing infant girls!’
it was indeed not a shocker! That female foeticide is rampant all
across Gujarat and particularly in urban areas
is without doubt.
Gujarat is a highly patriarchal
society and this is clearly reflected in the social ethic which governs the
State; that a girl child is not wanted and women are not treated equally with
men is just taken for granted. Women in Gujarat
as a whole are condemned to a life of drudgery and there is a very small
percentage
of women who are professionals or who hold executive positions in the corporate
sector.
The Gujarat model of the girl child
certainly does no credit to a Government which has been boasting of
“development”
all along. In India today, the child sex ratio for every 1000 boys is 914 girls;
whereas in Gujarat it is just 890 girls to a 1000 boys with certain cities like
Surat (831:1000) and Vadodara (865:1000) falling far below that mark.
An important intervention would be to
educate all sections of society on the fundamental value of gender equality.
Inspite
of campaigns by the Government and the NGOs to save the girl child, precious
little would happen if there is no attitudinal change across all sections of
society. Even the textbooks which are promoted by the Government reek of a
patriarchal mindset. Within the average family, more importance is given to the
education of a boy rather than a girl. The tragedy is that several from across
the board see no problem in this.
Today, during a visit to a school in the
midst of the squalor and hostile environs of ‘Citizen Nagar’, several of the
girls studying in the school were asked what they would like to be in life; pat
came the responses: “Doctor”, “Teacher”, “Scientist”. If their dreams actually
materialise, it would surely be great going - unfortunately the way things
happen today is that most of them, if not all of them, would be married off at
the age of 18 and even earlier.
The Catholic Church in India observes September 8th as the ‘Girl Child Day’, in
keeping with the
birthday of Mary, the Mother of Jesus. A month later, on October 11th
the UN will celebrate the “International
Day of the Girl Child”. One surely needs to celebrate the girl child on
both these days; however; unless there is a sincere political resolve and an
attitudinal change in all sections of society with the sheer determination to
treat the girl child as equal to a boy child, we would surely have a long, long
way to go before we actually see any dramatic change in the status in the girl
child in Gujarat and in the rest of India.
7th
September, 2015
(* Fr. Cedric Prakash SJ is
the Director of PRASHANT, the
Ahmedabad-based Jesuit Centre for Human Rights, Justice and Peace.)
Address: ‘PRASHANT’,
Hill Nagar, Near Saffron Hotel, Drive-in Road, Ahmedabad - 380052
Phone:
(079) 27455913, 66522333 Fax: (079) 27489018
Email: sjprash...@gmail.com www.humanrightsindia.in
