• No girls to play with at school: India’s infanticide crisis
    49 replies, posted
[quote] DEVDA, India — As the only girl in her noisy classroom of 22 boys, Padma Kanwar Bhatti is one defiant symbol of the toll exacted by India’s deadly preference for male children. Padma, 15, lives with her parents and two elder brothers in Devda, a village of 2,500 residents in the Rajasthan state district of Jaisalmer, which has one of the worst female sex ratios in the country. “There is no other girl in my class and there are very few girls in our village,” she says hesitantly. Padma chooses to stare at her social science text book when asked why there are less girls and more boys in her village set in the barren lands of the Thar desert. “Girls die,” she says in Marwari, the main language of Rajasthan. Almost everyone in Devda and neighbouring villages acknowledges the reality of female infanticide, a crime based in ancient custom and continued today even as much of India experiences rapid economic and social change. “We are crazy for boys. We mourn when girls are born,” says Rajan Singhi, a farmer in Devda and a father of two boys, who is proud of his long ancestry as a member of the warrior Bhatti Rajput clan. In most cases the killing takes place within 24 hours of a baby’s birth and the crime is committed either by the mother or the midwife, he says. “I have heard that people administer opium or thrust a small but heavy sack filled with sand or mustard seeds on the baby’s face. Many mothers do not breast feed their daughter, starving the child to death,” Singhi says. Local historians believe infanticide in the region may have its roots in wars fought generations ago when Rajput Hindu clan elders chose the drastic step of killing their daughters to save them from rape by Muslim invaders. The Muslim attackers would plunder Hindu villages, rape girls and throw them in the village wells. “Unable to deal with the dishonour, the Rajputs chose to kill their daughters,” Umashankar Tyagi, a social historian in Jaipur, the state capital of Rajasthan, told AFP. In peace time, the custom continued to thrive, Tyagi said, explaining that “the expense of dowries, illiteracy, poverty are the new justification for infanticide”. Clan elders and state government officials say that just two Devda girls have had weddings in the village in the last 100 years. The situation reflects a nationwide crisis in India, where the preference for boys is partly due to the key role that sons play in Hindu funeral ceremonies. Other factors are the substantial — and illegal — dowries that a father must provide for his daughter’s new family at her wedding, and the fact that sons are often seen as breadwinners and daughters as financial burdens. As many as half a million female foetuses are estimated to be aborted each year in India, according to a study by British medical journal The Lancet. In Rajasthan, local administration and senior police officials say they are aware of the atrocities committed against female infants, but the authorities appear reluctant to intervene into private family lives. “Infanticide is an open secret but it is next to impossible to prove the crime,” says Mamta Bishnoi, senior police officer of Jaisalmer district. “Girls are buried in the desert and no one in the clan ever inquires about the newborn or mourns the loss,” says Bishnoi, adding “we cannot dig up the entire desert to hunt for the girls.” The Jaisalmer district has one of the worst child gender ratios in India. It stands at 868 girls under six per 1,000 boys, compared with 914 girls per 1,000 boys across India, according to 2011 census data. In Devda, women are relegated to the innermost chamber of the house, and can step out only for a visit to the temple. They walk in pairs, covering their faces with bright coloured scarves like a screen, so that even the shadow of a man does not fall on them. “I don’t send my daughter to the school because I don’t like idea of girls talking to male teachers,” says Bimla Devi Bhatti, a mother of two daughters. “We have to give gold, silver, cash, vessels, beds, television sets, air coolers, clothes to the groom’s family and also arrange for a three-day village feast during a daughter’s wedding,” says Bhatti. “We have to start saving for the dowry since the day a daughter is born. I will have to sell my land to get them married.” In an attempt to end the killing, the state government has proposed to open a bank account for every girl child born in the state and deposit 25,000 rupees (500 dollars). Once the girl turns 18, the government will gift her the amount to give the family a financial incentive to save their daughters. “But this proposal is yet to be implemented,” says Yashveer Pokharan, who works in a private school in Devda. “Daughters here desperately need this financial support to survive.” Any hope that the modernisation of Indian life could provide better prospects for the unborn girls of Devda may be misplaced. Cheap prenatal sex-determination technology such as ultrasound scans and blood tests has only worsened the problem of female foeticide in India’s middle-class city suburbs.[/quote] [url]http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/02/03/no-girls-to-play-with-at-school-indias-infanticide-crisis/[/url]
What? Why would they still do this. It's an ancient custom, let it go and stop being stupid.
because indians are stubborn people and will never give up their traditions
[QUOTE=SteeleCratos;34527605]because indians are stubborn people and will never give up their traditions[/QUOTE] Even if it isolates them from the rest of the world because of what they believe? Because i'm sure countries want nothing to do with a country which actively encourages female foetus abortion/murder shortly after birth.
She must get all the dick.
[QUOTE=Garik;34527653]She must get all the dick.[/QUOTE] If anything they'd slap her to death with them.
It's fairly common in places where culture dictates the roles of each gender. It's not terribly long ago that women were traditionally seen as a financial burden in the Western world too.
They're basically killing off their future by killing all women like that. Kinda need them to reproduce, know what I'm saying?
There needs to be a country with a preference for women. Like an island full of lesbians or something.
Not that india couldnt do with some decreased population.
how the hell can there be so many if there are so few who can give birth [editline]3rd February 2012[/editline] [QUOTE=Parakon;34528845]There needs to be a country with a preference for women. Like an island full of lesbians or something.[/QUOTE] [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lesbos[/url] ?
[QUOTE=Kagrs;34527753]It's fairly common in places where culture dictates the roles of each gender. It's not terribly long ago that women were traditionally seen as a financial burden in the Western world too.[/QUOTE] Women still are a financial burden.
[QUOTE=Madman_Andre;34527796]They're basically killing off their future by killing all women like that. Kinda need them to reproduce, know what I'm saying?[/QUOTE] Well if they are so determined about it, they can go right ahead and wipe themselves out. Vagina hating never leads to a happy ending.
[QUOTE=Parakon;34528845]There needs to be a country with a preference for women. Like an island full of lesbians or something.[/QUOTE] I'd visit that.
[QUOTE=Kagrs;34527753]It's fairly common in places where culture dictates the roles of each gender. It's not terribly long ago that women were traditionally seen as a financial burden in the Western world too.[/QUOTE] You see how much they spend on clothes? I could go to old navy and spend $90 on clothes (which is alot for me) and my sisters could be there and spend like $1000 on the same amount of clothes.
[QUOTE=Parakon;34528845]There needs to be a country with a preference for women. Like an island full of lesbians or something.[/QUOTE] Lesbonia is a pretty sweet place, it's not on the map because it's basically Atlantis and in the middle of the Indian Ocean.
Kind of sick to kill the child when it's already been born, kill it when it's a clump of cells ffs.
Its kinda of sad that they dont value human life that much and let em just die if it happens to be girl. By the way, is there some place that has opposite problem ;)?
[QUOTE=JUOPPO;34530611]Its kinda of sad that they dont value human life that much and let em just die if it happens to be girl. By the way, is there some place that has opposite problem ;)?[/QUOTE] The western world. Just log onto any porn site.
Indian men will in future generations have to outsource for women to have their children.
There's gonna be allot sexually frustrated Indians. And they are very computer literate too', they shall join FP.
its like china. Self-population control? rate me boxes.
All we need is a massive Indian Civil War to curb the young male population. Problem solved!
well in other news, this is great business for Ukraine
[QUOTE=The Baconator;34531892]There's gonna be allot sexually frustrated Indians. And they are very computer literate too', they shall join FP.[/QUOTE] they will blend in perfectly
[QUOTE=JerryK;34532474]well in other news, this is great business for Ukraine[/QUOTE] All those Ukrainian bitches go for rich old American men so they can get American citizenship and all their money when they die in two weeks. Plus going to India would give them relatively the same living conditions as Ukraine.
Couldn't this eventually lead to an extreme population decline? When you have lots of men and very few women, things tend to slow down in the "birth to death" category.
I hate it when people say that people will never get out of traditions. India is a democratic country that is developing very quickly. Give it two or three generations and I guarantee 90% of this shit will stop.
when i read this, all i could think of was a line a great Zapp Brannigan said... "what are you? gay?"
[quote=SteeleCratos]because indians are stubborn people and will never give up their traditions[/quote] Whoa, nice generalization there. Way to look like an asshole. [QUOTE=LuckyLuke;34527623]Even if it isolates them from the rest of the world because of what they believe? Because i'm sure countries want nothing to do with a country which actively encourages female foetus abortion/murder shortly after birth.[/QUOTE] The government doesn't support it. You need to understand that a lot of India still has relatively little contact with the metropolitian areas, and the majority of the population is based in small backwater villages that nobody ever goes to - the government included. Then they send their kids to school in cities, and lo and behold, they've been murdering all their girls. The government needs to do more to stop it. But in a country with a population over 1 billion, that's much harder than it looks.
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