Beti Bachao Beti Padhao
institutional deliveries (to avoid abortions), registration of births and celebration of the birth of the girl child
& felicitating the mothers.
and community watch groups to keep a vigil on the ultrasonography
centres or persons indulging in unfair or illegal practices. She told
DCs to ensure that Gudda-Guddi boards should be displayed in every
panchayat office providing the details of number of boys and girls born
in a month. She also requested to provide incentives and to recognize
individuals, villages, gram panchayats supporting the cause of BBBP.
Apart from the two above major reasons, the others are:-
not by their choice. It is the normal society which is enforcing all
the above points on the girls & their parents in the name of our
established ‘customs and traditions’.
name on marrying her husband i.e she merges with her husband’s family
and is no longer considered a part of her father’s family. But, is it
really neccessary? There are many women who maintain both their father’s
and husband’s name. Take for example – Ms Sulajja Firodia Motwani,
Aiswarya Rai Bachan etc but these are limited to the high societies
only. The society could easily form a custom of retaining the family
names of both father and husband with a girl’s name.
Well it does take a lot of money to get a girl married. While the
expenses to conduct the marriage depend on the affluence of the father
of the bride, it is the aspect of dowry that is back breaking for many a
parent. This is the single most issue critical for the increase in female foeticide.
A boy only brings home money (in the form of dowry) whereas the girl
takes away a lot of money from her parents (often all of it).
family functions etc. whereas, in the case of a boy, one just needs to
give birth and he will surely get married and bring home some money
even if he is handicapped. Though the Govt banned dowry as illegal, it
is common knowledge that dowry is given and many times photographs are
also taken of money being handed over.
In the present setup, a girl quite obviously cannot look after her
parents in their old age. Not because she doesn’t want to, but because her husband/in-laws would not let her
do so. The same husband would instantly drop her at his parents place
if they fall ill. So, whose fault is it? it is definitely not the girl
child’s!! It is the society that accepts in an unwritten code that a
girl (after marriage) need not go to look after her parents but must
look after her in-laws. This again requires only a change in the
mindset of the society and bring in new thought.
4. Some of the Parents with girl children feel inferior.
This again is a creation of the society only. Every elder blesses a
couple/woman to have a baby boy only and it is widely reported that if
you tell lies, you will have girl children (as a punishment). I heard
this saying for the first time while in class 6 and you can imagine its
effect on young minds. Many people also take it a curse to have girl
children (like in the movie devdas – in which kiron kher curses shah
rukh khan’s mother that they will have girl children in their house)
and men are considered macho only if they have boys. This not
withstanding the fact that Bill Clinton, George Bush, Michele Obama,
Manmohan Singh etc have only girl children. These feelings create an
inferiority complex and often there is a discussion of ‘ladki walein’
(girl’s side) and ‘ladke walein’ (boy’s side) even among friends and
relatives. And we do notice that that ‘ladke walein’ are often
insensitive to the needs of the ‘ladki walein’.
5. Traditionally, she cannot light the pyre of her parents.
Why not? Gone are the days when women were too weak hearted to light a
pyre or needed to be stopped from jumping into the pyre themselves. In
the modern day era, where women have reached the moon and are heading
the biggest of corporates, cant they light a pyre in the absence of any
male child in the family? The present custom is archaic and needs to be
changed.
6. A lifetime committment is required to look after the girl even after the marriage.
A lifetime committment is indeed required with a Girl due to the
present social conditions. For example – a pregnant girl is taken to
her home in the final months to provide her care and comfort. But the
reason for this custom is that she may not be looked after well in her
in-laws house. Similarly, the girl’s parents pay for the hospitalisation expenses and delivery of the child. Doesn’t the child belong to the husband also? Then why doesn’t the boy’s side pay? Similar are the cases during many festivals and family functions!!
7. She has to be protected and looked after wherever she goes unlike a boy.
She has to be protected in the present day world where even 2 year old
babies are not spared from rape. That is the subject of my next blog
post.
In olden times when families and the
number of children were large, it was an extremely remote possibility
for a couple to have only girls. Sometimes they had a boy after 4
or 5 girls (in extreme cases) This resulted in every family having a
mix of both boys and girls. This permitted easy implementation of most
of the customs as families were balanced. For example if a girl in a
family was married off and dropped her father’s name, there was another
girl (as daughter -in-law) entering their house after dropping her own father’s
name. However with the families becoming nuclear and smaller (with
only 2 or 3 children), the balance is getting skewed against girls and
with this all the attendant problems are also on the rise.
Couple this with the ‘objectification’
of women in the movies,T.v and the internet – we have a recipe for
disaster in the name of female foeticide.
