On Sunday 10 Apr 2011 2:39:11 pm Stephanie Das Gupta wrote: > Women have proven they can do just as well as men, if not better, in > many levels. Why should we feel that women or girl children are so > insignificant that they can just be tossed away. >
Apart from making it a criminal offence to even detect the sex of a child pre- natally I think legislation to favor the girl child has to be enacted. Incentives must be given for girl children - like free education - or even payment of a sum of money to the family in exchange for ensuring that the girl actually attends school regularly. Laws that entitle daughters to ancestral property are a powerful tool. As I see it the fundamental problem is complicity of the political classes and the police in perpetuating attitudes that favor boy over girl - which is a reflection of Indian society at large. The number of burn deaths of young married women is disquieting and nobody seems to notice because it is typicallly passed off as a kitchen accident. But few Indians want to admit that there is a sort of sickness in society that needs to be acknowledged before it can be addressed. The sickness has received the blessing of having been there for so long that it is called "tradition". You can be chronically sick, but if sickness is tradition it's OK. Its culture. Many Indian traditions need to be discouraged even if they seem harmless. One such tradition is the "sending away" of the pregnant woman before delivery to her mother's house. While this undoubtedly ensures that the girl gets more attention (and possibly better care) in her mother's house the tradition is indicative of a general lack of feeling of responsibility for a daughter in law during a most vulnerable period where she is seen as a burden to her husband, and in turn to her parents-in-laws household. The husband never gets to see the pain and vulnerability of his wife at childbirth. He does not have to stay up nights helping with the feeding and changing. Even bonding with the father may not be great in a joint family where the mother has several childen in quick succession. And because all of Indian society believes that it is the mother's duty to care for the child and the duty of her parents to help with that - even employers in India are unlikely to be sympathetic to the idea that men may need time off to help at the time of childbirth. All these "traditions" and attitudes add to the idea that the girl is a burden anyway and the only way she can ease that burden is to produce a boy child who will not be a burden to his family in this manner. These are my views. At best they are ignored in polite Indian company. Often they invite angry responses. But until I someone shows me that I am wrong - these remain my views. shiv
