The Hindu : New Delhi News : Affluent families indulging in foeticide

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Dec 26, 2007
ePaper

New Delhi

New Delhi

Affluent families indulging in foeticide

Literacy and per capita incomes have no bearing on the mindset of people
Social activists find fault with government strategy

New Delhi: Affluent families in posh areas of the country’s metropolises are indulging in female foeticide to fulfil their quest for a male child, according to latest government figures.

Providing proof that high levels of literacy and per capita incomes have no bearing on the mindset of people in the posh areas of Delhi and Mumbai, recent government figures show that in high-income South Delhi, the sex ratio was 762 females per 1,000 males, while in Mumbai’s Borivali it was 728 and 887 in Goregaon and Andheri West.

“It can now be safely accepted that high-income families with increased access to techniques of sex determination are the ones which are going in for selective abortions rather than the low-income group areas,” according to a senior Health Ministry official.

The government was working on a strategy to crack down on mushrooming ultrasound clinics in these areas. “We are trying to put in a system of accountability for such clinics,” a senior Health Ministry official said. Social activists, however, find fault with the government’s strategy of cracking down on the clinics, saying it focuses only on the registration of the number of ultrasound scans and not on the actual act of abortions of female foetuses.

“Only 406 violations of the Act have been registered and two doctors have been punished so far,” a women’s activist and member of the Health Ministry’s Advisory committee on the Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PNDT) Act. “The government’s performance has been lacklustre in this field,” she told PTI.

Union Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss had recently advocated life sentence for those taking recourse to such measures, but a high-level committee, formed to suggest amendments to the Act to give it more teeth, recommended enhancement of the prison term and increase in fine.

The punishment for such crimes, which was imprisonment for around two to five years till now, has been recommended to be increased to around five to seven years and the fine raised to at least Rs. 5 lakh. Dr. Ramadoss has time and again expressed his helplessness in implementing the existing laws citing non-cooperation of the State governments. The Centre will hold another round of meeting of the advisory committee in February following which the amendments would be sent to the Parliament for ratification. — PTI

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

New Delhi