India to pay poor families to bring up girls

[Guest guest]

India to pay poor families to bring up girls

Randeep Ramesh

Delhi

guardian.co.uk,

Monday March 3 2008

 

[better coverage of the same topic]

 

The Indian government today announced a scheme to pay

poor families to give birth to and bring up girls in an attempt

to stop families nationwide aborting an estimated half a

million female foetuses a year.

 

Families in seven states are set to benefit from cash

payments amounting to 15,500 rupees to keep and bring up

their female children.

 

Ministers say more than 100,000 girls could be saved in the

first year. In India ultrasound technology coupled with a

traditional preference for boys, who are seen as future

breadwinners, has led to mass female foeticide.

 

According to a study in the British medical journal, the

Lancet, 10 million female foetuses may have been aborted

in India over the last 20 years following illegal sex

determination tests.

 

The government has been alarmed by the country's

increasingly skewed gender ratio and hopes the promise of

money will change people's behaviour. As an extra

incentive, girls who reach 18 will get another 100,000

rupees provided they have completed their school

education and are not married.

 

" We will pay the money in stages and monitor how they are

brought up, " India's women and child development minister,

Renuka Chowdhury, told a news conference. " We think this

will force the families to look upon the girl as an asset rather

than a liability and will certainly help us save the girl child. "

 

The tragedy of being conceived female in India has been

well documented.

 

The sex ratio in India was 945 female per 1,000 male babies

in 1991, declining to 927 per 1,000 in 2001. The scheme

will begin in areas with the worst ratios.

 

However, some experts question whether the cash incentive

will have any effect. Wealthier cities, with a high proportion

of better-educated people, have the worst sex ratios.

Prosperous Chandigarh in Punjab and the nation's capital,

Delhi, have only 900 females for every 1,000 male babies.

 

" It is the urban middle classes can also afford the ultrasound

tests to determine the sex of the foetus, " said Sabu George, a

campaigner against female foeticide.

 

" That is really the problem. The poor are copying the

behaviour of the richer people in India. What we have not

seen stop is that technology is more and more available and

that every small town now has a doctor who illegally will

test your baby's sex and abort it for a fee. "

 

George says there is a " conspiracy of silence " by the

medical profession over female foeticide. In the 12 years

since selective abortion was outlawed only one doctor has

been convicted of the crime. The government is also

considering giving life sentences to doctors convicted of the

offence.

 

The social implications of India's " missing girls " has

worried many researchers. Some point to surveys which

show brides are being trafficked across India. Other social

scientists have predicted a crime explosion as unmarried

young men turn to violence, unable ever to find a mate.

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/mar/03/babies