India gives incentives for girl children to stem female foeticide

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India gives incentives for girl children

to stem female foeticide

Mon, 03 Mar 2008

The Earth Times (UK)

New Delhi

 

The Indian government announced Monday a slew of

incentives for poor families with girl children in an effort to

stem the practice of female foeticide. Under the scheme

named Dhan Laxmi after the Hindu goddess of wealth, poor

families with a girl child would be given cash incentives for

registration of birth, immunization, enrolment in school and

delaying marriage till she is 18, India's Minister for Women

and Child Development Renuka Chowdhury said.

 

In addition the girl child would be provided an insurance

cover of 100,000 rupees at birth and the rest of the

incentives would come to a cash package of about 200,000

rupees, Chowdhury was quoted as saying in an official

release.

 

The scheme would initially be introduced in seven states as

a pilot project and later extended to the entire country.

 

These include northern Haryana and Punjab, southern

Andhra Pradesh, central Chattisgarh and Uttar Pradesh and

eastern Orissa, Jharkhand and Bihar, where gender selection

and selective abortion have led to an imbalance in the male

to female ratio.

 

The child sex ratio in Haryana, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh,

Delhi and Chandigarh is at less than 900 girls per 1,000

boys, the release said.

 

Modern sex selection technology combined with a

traditional preference for boys are the main reasons for the

skewered ration.

 

Traditionally girls are seen as burdens, as huge dowries

have to be paid for their weddings and even if they do earn

income it adds only to the capacities of the family into

which they marry.

 

Hinduism, the majority religion in India, also allows only a

son or male relative to light the father's pyre. Then there is

the notion of the family lineage which can only be

propagated through the male line.

 

Chowdhury said the aim of the Dhan Laxmi scheme was to

make people value the girl child. " People worship the

goddess of wealth in temples, but not the girl child at

home, " she said.

 

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/189572,india-

gives-incentives-for-girl-children-to-stem-female-

foeticide.html