Written by :- CHETANA CHAUDHURY
Bleeding eyes full of sin, hopelessness choking the throat, invisible hands of a murderer? Is she a mother? Who couldn’t save her beloved child?
She is screaming eternal. She is holding suffice, a dead body. Not of her child but of her trust and soul…
There are some ugly truths that need our attention and it’s high time that we stop turning a deaf year towards them. Female infanticide is one such social issue.
Female infanticide is a heinous crime. In simple terms, it is a deliberate attempt to kill newborn female children within one year of their birth. It is a century old phenomena caused by social evils likes poverty, illiteracy, child marriage, dowry system, births to unmarried women, female genital mutilation, famine, maternal illness, sex-selective abortion, etc. These barbaric practices are still rampant in India, forcing people to commit social evils like female infanticide, female feticide, and sex-selective abortion.
Sex ratio in India is rapidly decreasing. This is mostly to do with what is the ‘value’ of a girl child in India. There is a strong preference for male children than female children
Most Indians have stereotyped opinions about girls. They are socialised to believe that girls will eventually get married and go to another household and serve them. Therefore, girls are often considered a financial burden. Educating them is not deemed necessary and their opinions don’t matter. This is one of the major reasons for preferring a son over a daughter.
The dowry system in India is one given reason for female infanticide; over a time period spanning centuries it has become embedded within Indian culture. In 1990, Amartya Sen writing in the New York Review of Books estimated that there were 100 million fewer women in Asia than would be expected, and that this amount of “missing” women “tell[s] us, quietly, a terrible story of inequality and neglect leading to the excess mortality of women.”
This concept is called Female infanticide. It is the deliberate killing of newborn female children. In majority of cases, the mother goes through an emotional and mental turmoil. She feels caged in her helplessness. It’s a trauma where she has to live with her husband; that house which she loathes, which killed her child. Be it girl or boy, afterall we all know that a baby when born is first a human. She blames herself as if it’s her fault. Is it true? Who is at fault? Was marrying the person of her dreams, her fault?
Every dream can turn out to be a nightmare or mistake in no seconds. It all takes right conscience and morals to stand up for what is right and not how this so called society looks upto!
The need of the hour is to change such narrow mindsets of people. This will help in empowering females.
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