Falak saga latest in India’s battle for its missing girls
A two-year-old girl battling for life in a New Delhi hospital has put the media spotlight on a sordid tale of child abuse and prostitution in the world’s biggest democracy.
Three weeks ago, a toddler with severe injuries was brought to the hospital by a teenager claiming to be her mother. The child, later named Falak (sky) by nurses, was in critical condition, with human bite marks on her body.
Her story is being played out on television screens across India, shocking viewers with images of a hapless baby hooked up to a ventilator. There are daily updates on her health, while television campaigns exhort the government to do more for abandoned children.
The case has also drawn attention to one of India’s most shameful truths — shocking levels of mistreatment and neglect of the girl child.
Media reports say the battered and bruised toddler had been abandoned by her biological mother and passed on several times before landing up in the arms of a teenager, herself a victim of abuse.
A TrustLaw survey in 2011 ranked India fourth among the world’s most dangerous countries for women — with respondents citing female foeticide, child marriage and high levels of trafficking and domestic servitude.
Falak’s mother, tracked down by police this week, was apparently unaware of the child’s condition. The young woman has a sob story of her own — lured to New Delhi with the promise of a job, nearly forced into prostitution, coerced into a second marriage and separated from her three children.
New gender detection technique: gift or curse for girls in India?
By Ariana Wardak
Researchers in South Korea have developed a blood test that can determine the sex of a foetus as early as five weeks but not everyone may be gung-ho about the discovery, fearing it might be misused for sex selection in South Asian countries such as India where boys are prized over girls.
While the ability to determine the gender of a baby through a simple and cheap blood test may be seen as a blessing in the scientific community, the technique might prove lethal to baby girls in India where there is already a great difference in gender ratio with 933 females for every thousand males.
Until three decades ago, female infanticide — the killing a newborn baby girl — was widespread in India but due to advancement in technology, it is now possible to determine the gender in the womb itself, leading to a higher number of abortions.
The ultrasound test is currently the most commonly used procedure for finding the gender of the baby but it cannot be done before five months of pregnancy whereas an invasive test that carries a one to two percent risk of miscarriage must be done after 11 weeks.
“(The new test could) reduce the need for invasive procedures in pregnant women carrying an X-linked chromosomal abnormality and clarify inconclusive readings by ultrasound,” lead researcher Hyun Mee Ryu said.
The scientists said the method “might promote the potential for sex selection” and warned “there should be careful consideration about the use of this analytical tool in clinical situations”.
At some point they shall realize that all the baby girls are killed and they have no women to get married to, that is when all shall change.
Star seeks groom on TV and other soaps
A new reality show in which a bunch of suitable men vie for the hand of Bollywood starlet Rakhi Sawant is an interesting twist on the prevailing custom of Indian men choosing their brides.
“Rakhi Sawant ka Swayamvar“, which harks back to the ancient tradition of princesses choosing a groom from a line-up, began airing on Monday night, pitting more than a dozen men from varied backgrounds — and with varying singing and dancing abilities — wooing Sawant, a colourful personality known more for her antics off camera.
It may be yet another publicity stunt for Sawant, who claims she will marry one of the men at the end of the series in a traditional wedding ceremony.
It may be yet another move by the channel, fighting for eyeballs and advertisers, to score high TRPs – or Television Rating Points that show how popular a programme is.
Still, it offers some respite from the female stereotyping on the Indian airwaves: from ads that show women as being incapable of any decision save the right cooking oil for the family, to shows that glorify child marriage and female foeticide under the guise of ushering in social change.
A soap featuring a child bride married at the age of eight claims it “very sensitively portrays the plight of children who are unwittingly forced into marriage, in the name of tradition”.
A brief blink-and-you-miss-it disclaimer at the end of the show says child marriage is illegal.
The sad state of Indian soap operas
Prime-time television in India is not really known for sensible content. Especially the soap operas. I have never been a fan but one tedious evening, I switched on the telly and sat through one “saas-bahu” serial after another.
What was it about family dramas that kept millions of Indian women glued to their TV sets each evening? I intended to find out.
In one such episode, a mother-in-law laments the loss of an unborn grandchild.
“We have lost our grandson and our daughter-in-law cannot bear a child after this. Now we will never have a grandson to take the family name forward.”
I wondered how the mother-in-law could be so sure the unborn child was male. Did she get a sex-determination test done? Or was it some divine revelation.
As the story of one serial after the other unfolded on screen, I realized that to be the “perfect” woman on Indian television, one needed to be a docile housewife and sacrifice everything for the family’s happiness.
Even if that meant putting up with philandering husbands.
Yep, all the soaps suck, they constantly show all the negatives…http://cashcrate.com/816599
A horrible day in Haryana, and a challenge to India’s police
I had a truly depressing day in Haryana this week, reporting on the murder of a 21-year-old girl and her 22-year-old boyfriend .
It was sad enough to meet a village where many appeared proud of this brutal murder. To come home and see the photos of Sunita and Jasbir, laid out outside her father’s house for all the world to see, was heartbreaking.
Fear still stalks the villages of Balla and Machhroli where the murders took place. Jasbir’s family have been threatened by other villagers that they will also be killed if they speak to the media or if they refuse to drop charges.
Few of them had faith in the police. They said they were “too poor to pay a bribe”. Five people have been arrested, including the girl’s father, uncle and two cousins. I met another cousin, right on the spot where the bodies were laid out, who started by trying to intimidate us and ended up saying he was proud of the murder.
In a tiny police post, a corporal told me such cases rarely if ever reach prosecution. “Witnesses back out,” he told me. “The entire village is on one side”.
As I looked further into the story, I found that love liaisons like Sunita and Jasbir’s, between a couple from the same village, were a direct threat to the upper caste old men of Haryana.
A girl who dares marry against their will, and stay in her own village, might just mount a claim to a portion of the family’s land, as she is legally entitled to do.
Astounding that such cowards who’d strangle a pregnant woman and creep up on the back of another man can consider themselves to have fulfilled their duties.
Its frightening to consider what the playwright Terence said, ‘”Nothing human is alien to me” in this light. How lowly an act to have commited though. You have to wonder at first why this couple stayed near these other people, I suppose they wanted to make a stand for themselves. /That/ is fulfillment of a person’s duties; standing up for yourself in the face of such a horrible thing.
A son is a son till he gets a wife. A daughter is a daughter for all her life.
Most educated people have started realizing this.
Child protection law backed by strong awareness campaign through various media and simplifying adoption rules can start getting desired results.