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The missing girl
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Delhi University academic Tulsi Patel has just edited a comprehensive book on sex-selective abortion in India
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PHOTO: SANDEEP SAXENA
RAISING A POINT Tulsi Patel
With issues like poverty, malnutrition, illiteracy and unemployment, etc. rampant in the country, sex-selective abortion is often confused as yet another long-standing problem of a nation infested with multiple problems.
But when Delhi University professor Tulsi Patel gives out the details from her research on the subject, in the afternoon stillness of her apartment, even her soft, restrained tone does enough to form a monster in front of you. It hits you so hard that girls are indeed increasingly going missing from our society, even before their birth. All under cover, across caste and income barriers.
Technology trouble
"It is an alarming situation. Now with the rise of technology, women going for sex-selective abortion is like going to a beauty parlour now," says Patel.
A professor of sociology with Delhi School of Economics, Patel has been working in the field of gender, anthropology of fertility and reproduction for long but her brush with female foeticide particularly has happened after she conducted a study on family planning for Oxfam in the Bundelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh.
"During my study, I came across people who would mention in a roundabout way how they know of someone who knows someone who had done sex-selective abortion."
It took Patel some time though to pin down exactly who had committed the crime. "Though my study on the subject is largely confined to North India but it threw up interesting trends. Dowry has been an immediate cause of female foeticide among the upper classes but it has now spread to other communities too, say for instance, the OBCs, who never had such a practice. Sex-selective abortion is an immediate fall-out of it," she points out.
Patel calls this "sanskritisation of society" wherein people from lower caste are taking the easy way to rise up on the caste ladder by trying to emulate what upper caste `customs' are. "Marriage being an important part of our society, in more and more cases, one notices that this custom is being used to draw a parallel. And how do you do that? It is by giving a hefty dowry," she reasons.
This and more trends coming her way made her compile a book, "Sex-selective Abortion in India", recently published by Sage, with as many as 11 study papers by various experts.
The papers look at many issues with depth like the state's family planning and literacy policies, the role of NGOs, feminist activists and medical practitioners, the rampant use of ultrasound machines without any supervision, etc.
"Side by side with stringent appliance of law, efforts should be made to break the immediate connection between dowry and the birth of a girl child," she urges. Hope at least someone's listening to her plea.
SANGEETA BAROOAH PISHAROTY
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