A Generation of Girls Is Missing in India – Foreign Policy
▻https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/08/15/a-generation-of-girls-is-missing-in-india
Young Indian women walk past a billboard in New Delhi encouraging the birth of girls on July 9, 2010.
RAVEENDRAN/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Perched almost a mile above sea level and circled by majestic Himalayan peaks, Uttarkashi is a spot where religious pilgrims often make a pit stop before proceeding on the sacred Hindu Char Dham Yatra, the Four Abode Pilgrimage, which they believe will bring them closer to salvation. With its verdant landscape, dotted by temples and yoga ashrams, Uttarkashi is a place of breathtaking beauty.
But all is not well in this peaceful Himalayan district. Between February and April, not a single female child was born here in 216 births across the 132 villages. Local authorities, suspecting sex-selective abortions, have launched an extensive investigation, spearheaded by the district magistrate, Ashish Chauhan.
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Although exact numbers of such terminations are not available, according to the first national study on abortion overall, an estimated 15.6 million abortions [▻https://www.guttmacher.org/news-release/2017/national-estimate-abortion-india-released ] took place in India in 2015. Although the practice is legal up to 20 weeks into a pregnancy under a broad range of criteria, an estimated 10 women die every day due to unsafe procedures. As many as 56 percent [▻http://www.hindustantimes.com/health-and-fitness/behavioural-shift-communication-can-raise-awareness-about-safe-abortions-in-india/story-nZ2t3BFyO8jZluHPj9WCwK.html ] of abortions in India are estimated to be unsafe, and about 8 to 9 percent of all maternal deaths [▻https://www.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/56-abortions-in-india-unsafe-despite-being-legal-kill-10-women-ev ] in India are due to unsafe abortions.
It is safe to assume that a large number of the abortions that happen in India are performed because the fetus is female. Last year, an Indian government report [▻http://mofapp.nic.in:8080/economicsurvey/pdf/102-118_Chapter_07_ENGLISH_Vol_01_2017-18.pdf ] found that about 63 million women were statistically “missing” from the country’s population due to a societal preference for male children. And this problem does not just stem from sex-selective abortion. The report noted that another 21 million girls were considered “unwanted” by their families, who continue to have children until a son is born. Roughly 239,000 girls under the age of 5 died in India every year between 2000 and 2005 due to gender-based neglect, according to a 2018 study [▻https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(18)30184-0/fulltext ].
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Efforts to enforce the law have also been lacking. Despite vast evidence that sex-selective abortion happens on a wide scale, it still goes largely unpunished, mostly due to ineffective and lackadaisical judicial systems. According to data from the National Crime Records Bureau, between 2002 and 2012, there were a mere 218 cases charging medical practitioners with performing ultrasounds with an intention to determine the sex of the fetus. Only 55 people were convicted.
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India is already experiencing all of these problems, especially in northern states with particularly bad sex ratios. According to a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India [▻https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/survey-shows-sex-ratio-falling-further-to-896-in-3-years-to-2017/articleshow/70221462.cms ], the female sex ratio has fallen to 896 females per 1,000 males in 2015 to 2017 from 898 in 2014 to 2016. The Wire reported [▻https://thewire.in/gender/urban-sex-ratio-declining ] that according to census data, India’s national child gender ratio fell from 945 girls to 1,000 boys in 1991 to 918 in 2011. The states of Haryana, Punjab, Jammu and Kashmir, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Uttarakhand, and Maharashtra all had a ratio even lower than 900 girls per 1,000 boys.
As Epstein, who has collected data in more than 100 countries, including the United States, told me in 2015 [▻https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/india/2015-05-22/when-bride-be-bride-buy ], “Extra males affect the social system quite dramatically. Even now, there are women being drugged and kidnapped from Bangladesh and poor Indian states because there is a shortage of young females. Take that effect and magnify it over a period of years. It’s a social disaster.”
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Before it digs its own grave, India must bring back its girls.
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