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India's Lost Girls
Jill McGivering
February 4, 2003
A marriage crisis is hitting thousands of men in parts of rural India which are
running out of potential brides. The traditional preference for boys instead of
girls has led to widespread abuse of modern pre-natal scans.
The technology should protect the health of mother and baby.
But, wrongly used, it is a death sentence for unwanted girls.
The practice of determining the sex of a foetus and aborting girls is illegal,
but widespread.
The worst affected states, such as Haryana and Punjab, now have some of the
most skewed sex ratios in the world - and the proportion of baby girls is still
falling.
Buying brides
A whole generation of young men is failing to find brides.
Many are now resorting to "buying" girls from poor communities outside the
region to bear their children.
Government officials raid clinics to make sure doctors are not abusing modern
technology by tipping off parents they were carrying girls. Prejudice against
girls runs deep
In many clinics, the illegal and systematic abortion of girls is common
practice.
In Punjab, special prayers of thanks greet the birth of a boy. Prejudice runs
deep. Girls are born into silence.
"People say, you have two girl children, you have done some sins in your past
life," said office manager Surinder Saini.
"With a boy child, people say your generation will propagate, your older age
will be safer. This is the concept of our society."
Combating prejudice
Mr Saini is a fierce campaigner against female foeticide. He and his wife have
two daughters.
But even they aborted their third child after tests showed it was a girl.
All those years of prejudice against girls are finally coming back to haunt
this society.
There is such an acute gender imbalance here that it is causing real social
problems.
Young men are coming of marriageable age, only to discover there is no-one left
for them to marry.
The young girls who would have been their brides never had the chance to be
born.
The villages are full of frustrated bachelors. In Haryana, a quarter of the
female population has simply disappeared.
Many now see buying wives from outside as their only option.
Foreign imports
"I couldn't find a local girl," said Chandram, who purchased a wife last year
from Bangladesh. "So I had to go outside to get married. But it wasn't cheap."
His bride looked about 15. Now she is thousands of miles from home.
They have just had their first child - a baby girl. She looked sickly,
struggling to survive.
The ghosts of missing babies are closing in.
If newly-weds continue with this brutal practice of eliminating girls, this
whole region is on course for catastrophe.
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