BLOG ON FEMALE FOETICIDE IN INDIA

 Its a chaotic time for human civilization. With the years, it has accumulated a mountain of issues that are now impossible to tackle. The world issues are becoming bigger as a result of globalisation. The process of progress has brought with it a sociocultural shift that is affecting the well-established customary ways of living in the pleasant rural setting. Being the primary unit of social organisation, raising children is a never-ending social activity. Only by tracking how it has evolved across society can we begin to grasp what it entails. A family is a group of people who have established and maintain a bond that allows them to have and raise children. Most nuclear families have a mother, father, and their offspring, although historically, the ratio of male to female offspring has been far lower in such families. Historically and still, the practise of killing new-born females and fetuses was a major factor in this. As a result, every culture has a persistent problem with the murder of young women.

 

Statistics gathered over the last two decades confirm the persistent gender bias towards having sons rather than daughters. Often, boys have easier access to resources like schooling, healthcare, and even food due to societal and religious norms that priorities males over females, as well as economic discrimination against women and girls. Women are disproportionately affected by the

consequences of this neglect, including increased rates of illiteracy, hunger, and bad health. Female infanticide, the practise of killing new-born females as a form of discrimination, is common in such contexts. Recent developments in these practices have included the introduction of sex selective abortions, in which women are able to choose whether or not to have children based on the gender of their unborn child. The widening gender gap among nations is a clear result of this practise.

 

The situation in India is similar to that in other nations, with the combined effects of historical prejudice against girls and the employment of cutting-edge technologies for sex-selection being plain to see. The child sex ratio has been steadily decreasing over the previous decade, as seen by data collected from the 2001 Census, which showed a drop from 945 girls to every 1000 boys (age 0–6 years) in 1991 to 927 girls to every 1000 boys in 2001. Data gathered by the Census Bureau in 2011 shows that the female-to-male birth-rate among children aged 0 to 6 has dropped to 914 per 1,000 births from 927 in 2001. Female infanticide has increased, and prenatal diagnostics for sex-determination (SD) and sex selection abortions have become more common, both of which are thought to be contributing factors in the drop (SSA).

 

At the end of the day, we have to wonder whether the only kind of infanticide that has lasted since colonial times is the feticide practised in metropolitan centers. Despite the efforts of social reformers throughout the colonial period, many harmful societal traditions about women persist today. There have been reports of sati in UP and Rajasthan, and child marriage is still common in rural India. Widow remarriage is forbidden among the top castes of Hinduism, and the Sanskritization of the lower castes is an issue that has yet to be resolved. Considering how these traditions have persisted, one may say that modernity brought its philosophy of sex equality into Indian culture without signific

• by Diksha Sareen

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