48 Delhi NGOs launch drive against female foeticide
November 20, 2001, New Delhi, India
Source: The Newindpress and propoor.org


As many as 48 NGOs in New Delhi have come together for the first time and launched a massive awareness campaign against female foeticide aiming to target communities and families.

The campaign, also a first of sorts that starts off Tuesday and would cover dozens of Delhi neighbourhoods, is provoked by increasing concern among women's rights activists over declining incidence of female births.

"The female-to-male ratio for children has declined substantially even though it has gone up for all ages," activist Gouri Choudhury, who represents Action India, one of the NGOs involved in the campaign, told reporters in New Delhi on Monday.

India has the dubious distinction of recording one of the world's lowest female-to-male ratios. It has 927 women per 1,000 males.

The campaign by the Delhi NGO Network, the name of the 48 NGOs' common platform, would distribute posters and organise street plays and puppet shows to inform that female foeticide is a crime if committed after a sex determination test.

Choudhury claimed that the female-male ratio in children of up to six years' old had fallen from 94.5 girls for 100 boys in 1991 to 92.7 girls in 2001.

"Delhi is one state that is guilty of this dramatic decline in the sex ratio." This year, New Delhi accounted for an abysmal 86.5 girls per 100 boys. Choudhury also lamented that a seven-year-old act banning the use of pre-natal diagnostic technologies (PNDT) for sex determination had remained on paper. In May this year, the Supreme Court asked the Indian Government to crack down on centres illegally determining foetal sex for their patients.

Lack of education and healthcare, apart from a generally low social estimation of women, were the main reasons why parents often risked the banned tests, Choudhury said.

"Customs and the age-old tradition of preferring boys to girls have worsened female foeticide. It is also connected to the evil practice of dowry. Many parents, worried that if a girl is born to them they would need to spend much on fix her wedding, often abort the female foetuses."

Choudhury also dismissed the popular belief that such unethical familial and social pressure was restricted only to the economically poor class. "Many educated women too prefer a male child and go for sex-selective abortions."

According to another activists Sudha Gupta who has been working in Delhi's shantytowns for nearly two decades, said abortion was legally permitted only when the pregnant woman's life or health was at risk, or in cases of foetal impairment, rape and contraceptive failure.

"But there are hundreds of illegal centres in Delhi where sex determination tests are conducted and abortions are conducted. Yet, no one takes any action against such illegal shops."