Eligible Jat boys from Haryana travel 3,000 km across the country to find themselves a bride. With increasingly fewer girls in Haryana, they are seeking brides from as far away as Kerala as the only way to change their single status. The girls have not vanished overnight. Decades of sex determination tests and female foeticide that has acquired genocide proportions are finally catching up with states in India. At least one should think that whom his son will marry if there were boys all around. Girls can’t be produced using sorcery. They are the most beautiful gifts of God and we should look after them our hearts out. Why don’t people think before killing a female fetus that they exist this world because of a woman?
My heart wants to burst every time, I hear that girls are a burden on their parents or one got an abortion because it was a girl or any news like this. When will we grow up? Look around, women are competing with men everywhere. They are not only competing with men but also beating men frequently in many fields. Whether it is technology or business, armed forces or medical, everywhere women are going shoulder to shoulder with men. In every new survey, there is the decreasing sex ratio for women, why??? Where are we heading towards? In a recent survey we got that there are 927 girls per 1000 boys in 0-6 age group. It has declined from 945 per 1000 boys in 1991. The most surprising part of this that the worst ratio doesn’t come form Bihar or UP but it comes form Punjab, Haryana, Delhi and Gujrat. I especially want to mention Delhi, which claims it's residents smarter than those of other parts of the country. Delhi has 868 girls per 1000 boys in this particular age group.
In India we call girls an incarnation of Goddess Laxmi, the goddess of prosperity. But in the same country, around 2000 girls a day are missing as a result of FOETICIDE. Conducting sex determination tests is a heinous crime; still there are 34012 registered ultrasound clinics in India. Let me add more surprise element to those who think themselves as the urban educated class; according to the same survey, sex selective discrimination and female foeticide is more prevalent in the urban educated and prosperous classes. Again in terms of figures, the number of cases filed under PNDT (Pre Natal Diagnostic Test) act is most in Gujarat (95), Punjab (78), Delhi (53) and Maharashtra (38).
Also the old text books in lower standards reminded me something. If we have a look at it, we can clearly see the prevailing sexual discrimination in our country. Let’s have a look at one of the most beautiful ads from ‘Rajasthan Patrika’.
When will we stop just giving examples of Kiran Bedi, Kalpana Chawla, Sunita Williams and Indira Ghandhi instead of following the idea behind it? When will a day arrive when we have a 1:1 sex ratio in our country? When we will feel proud and feel same joy, if a baby girl arrives in our family? When will we…??? There are countless questions but our task is not to find the question but to find the answers to these questions and to start working in that direction.
[Nice presentation of Good Thoughts on really a serious issue...]
Everybody has a lot of questions today, many have answers too, but less are there to implement them... even less are there to follow them...
Your article reminded me a forwarded mail having few pictures trying to imagine the world without women. One of the pictures was of Goddess Saraswati in which only Swan was there and the Goddess herself was missing. Similarly in the other one Godess Laxmi was missing and only Owl was there... and some others... really, we can't even imagine the world without women...
"Buddhi-swar hans nahi dega, Naa ullu dhan de paayega,
Jhansi ki raksha to chhoro, koi janma nahi le paayega,
Durga ki puja karne ka, sachcha fal wo hi paayega,
Naari ki shakti samjhega, Kanya ko bali se bachaayega."