The Hindu : New Delhi News : A move in right direction

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Dec 12, 2004

New Delhi

New Delhi

A move in right direction

By Our Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI, DEC. 11. Welcoming the recent step taken by the National Commission for Women and the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development to release and distribute a handbook on "Pre-Elimination of Females'' to all Central Government schools, activists believe it is a move in the right direction. And while they hope that distribution of the handbook will help create awareness among the youth, it is only the beginning and will take more than just the introduction of "missing'' girls in the curriculum to change attitudes.

"The intention of bringing this subject into school is a good thought. But the persons who convey it are teachers who might be practising sex selection in their lives themselves. How will they convey this to students unless they discuss it? This is not only about the inclusion of lessons in a course, but it also requires an attitude change. I think it is a good experiment to try it out in Central Government schools in the beginning. But the better laboratory is training new teachers about this topic as well as teachers in service, so that they know what to do with information they get in the handbook,'' says Razia Ismail Abbasi, Co-Convenor of the India Alliance for Child Rights.

Putting together data from the States that show drastic fall in the child-sex ratio from 1991 Census to 2001 Census, the handbook aims to provide the reader with comprehensive information about pre-selection of girls. While the handbook will be distributed to Classes VIII to X, it is also hoped that wiping out of generations of girls through sex selection over the years be included in the school curriculum. However, with the rise of fundamentalism, activists fear that the subject of sex selection might fall prey to the anti-abortion debate and lead to an infringement on the rights of women to abortion.

"It is a positive move, but I hope that it does not get into anti-abortion debate. What we are dealing in with is discrimination and that it is what we should realise because some day there might not be any need to abort and other methods might come into use. Therefore it is important to remember that the issue is discrimination,'' says Sabu George of the Centre for Development Studies.

And with the child sex-ratio continuing to worsen in places like the Capital after the 2001 Census, activists believe that the topic should be included in public schools as well as schools of nursing and even to students of medicine.

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