‘Maha’ blunder

A new “gem” from the Maharashtra government: it has floated a new proposal to “reward” families who have a third child if it is a girl. Am I mighty impressed by this sudden girl shopping spree of the government? Apparently, the government wants to correct the skewed boy-girl ratio in the state, which is among the worst in the country at an abysmal 883 girls for every 1,000 boys. It also plans to tweak the existing laws to ensure government employees or elected representatives at all levels, including the gram panchayats, are not disqualified for giving birth to a third girl child.
This is the most bizarre proposal I have come across in a country, struggling with a high rate of population growth. We are already grappling with many many more mouths to feed, and a state government in this country comes up with this brainwave of encouraging families to go for a third child.
This is certainly not a solution to improve the sex ratio. The state government has ignored the gaping holes in its implementation of the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act (PC-PNDT) and the consequent large scale female foeticides. Now does it have a moral right to introduce an idiosyncratic proposal?
It says it will now introduce an awareness campaign in the state’s seven-worst affected districts. Where were those awareness campaigns when there were loud warning signs of a lop-sided gender ratio? Besides, how can families predict that its third child will be a girl? And, what if the third child turns out to be a boy in two of every three or say four families? Can our country afford to take this risk that will throw us beyond the edge of a population explosion? What’s more? The state government seems to be going against its own law, banning sex determination.
On the whole, the entire idea is ridiculous, bordering on profligacy. Merely doling out largesse and incentives to the girl child is grossly insufficient to curb the practice of female foeticide. In fact, it will only open up fresher avenues of corruption; the more proposals and incentives, the more money goes floating around, and more are the chances of that money sticking to the palms of our powers-that-be.
There has to be a turnaround of our psyche to make the girl child wanted; and this will work only if certain social evils are rooted out of our system. There has to be awareness in every warp and weft of our society’s fabric to eliminate gender discrimination that is prevalent at various layers and at various levels. In lower echelons, the gender discrimination begins with food and work distribution, education and health care; it continues at the altar and ends at the grave. In the middle-level society, basic education and health care is by and large taken care of, thanks to peer dynamics. But then career choices are given to a privileged few. In any case, most of them end up getting entangled in the evil web of dowry (sometimes in the guise of grand weddings). And, the lavishness of weddings despite the affordability of this class speaks volumes about the bias firmly entrenched in society.
The government must effectively implement laws securing gender equality. It must work from the grassroots level to ensure right to food, education and health care across gender; it must ensure to put in place effective mechanisms to root out social evils.
Finally, the bulk of the population, which comprises the middle class, must understand the meaning of bearing a healthy child, rather than a boy child. We, as a populace, must understand that it is not necessary to have a male progeny to “carry” forward the family name. That is the most preposterous of arguments in favour elimination of female foetuses and the urge to keep trying for a male child.
So instead of blaming our dumb politicians, let us clear the cobwebs in our minds; the gender ratio will automatically improve.