She lay on the bed feeling drained after a difficult childbirth. Her mother-in-law picked up the newly born child and started feeding her milk. The mother lying on the bed knew what was being done to her child, but she was too weak to intervene. She cried and pleaded with her motherin- law to let the girl live. But her pleas fell on deaf ears. The child had already taken a few mouthfuls of milk laced with poison from a local herb. Within moments it turned blue and died. Your first reaction to this account of a horrible murder of a newly born girl child would be disbelief. But such crimes are being committed across the country on a daily basis. In parts of Gujarat, mothers are known to drown their newborn infant girls in milk. In Rajasthan, it is possible to find entire villages where no girl has been born for decades. As for female foeticide, it is so widespread that in some interior villages of Punjab and Haryana, they say a mobile scan (ultrasound scan that goes around the town in a van) is more easily available than water supply! In Andhra Pradesh, it is quite common for tribal women to get rid of their baby girls by selling them to unscrupulous agents. Devious are the ways by which infant girls are being denied their right to live!

How surprising it is that a girl child should be so unwanted in Indian families! In Indian mythology, a woman is considered to be the origin of all creation; she subsumes a primeval force - Prakriti, Shakti, all that is divine and abundant. The entire topography of the Indian landscape is dominated by the feminine; every tree, river, mountain, stream, language, has a feminine aspect to it. Our most bountiful river Ganga is revered as Mother Ganges. The nation itself is called Mother India. Yet despite our veneration of the feminine we are a nation that has given social sanction for genocide against female babies.

In June 2007, a case came to light where a nursing home located in Delhi's posh neighborhood of Gurgaon was found conducting female foeticide in blatant disregard of the law. The chief medical officer of Gurgaon district, SS Dalal, said that the raid on the Buella Nursing Home followed a complaint that illegal abortions were being carried out there. “We have found several skulls and bones of fetuses that have been sent for forensic examination,” Dr Dalal told reporters. But the problem of female foeticide is not limited to one nursing home in the country; who knows how many other clinics there are that commit the murder of unborn girls in the hope of making some extra money.

The fact is that many Indian families consider themselves to be just too macho to bring up daughters. When female children get born they are either allowed to die from neglect or disposed of in some other way. Many couples living in towns and cities use medical tests to find out the gender of the unborn child and if the child is female they have the fetus aborted. This genocide of female babies has been going on for the last few decades and it has led to the creation of a social structure where the female population is very small compared to the male population.

In some parts of Gujarat, where female infanticide has been especially rampant, a census estimate says that there are 828 females for every 1000 males, but many unofficial sources aver that the figure stands at 700 females for every 1000 males. Such skewed sex ratio naturally results in a serious shortage of brides for Gujarati men. There have been numerous reports in the media that some rich men, desperate for female company, are paying poor men for the privilege of having their wife on a monthly rental basis. The going rate for renting a wife is said to be around 7000 rupees.

Selling girls for marriage is also becoming a booming business in Gujarat and many brokers are now earning handsome amount of money from it. The girl and her family hardly get a fair deal as the brokers pocket much of the money. Keeping monetary concerns aside, the system of hiring a girl to be anyone’s temporary wife is immensely absurd. But the authorities are often helpless to stop the practice as people fail to come forward to file a complaint. One can only offer one’s sympathy, compassion and prayer for the poor women who are being forced to undergo such humiliation.

In Punjab shortage of brides has forced many families to resort to polyandry. A case was recently shown on TV where two brothers got married to the same girl as their parents found it impossible to find separate brides for both of them. Some villages in Punjab that are dominated by Jat Sikh farmers are known to have only 550-600 girls per 1000 males and the disparity is growing. Punjab’s sex ratio is also forcing many of its young men to shop for brides from distant Bihar and Bengal states. But it is never easy for such wives to adjust to life in Punjab, and that leads to domestic disharmony. In the end the ghastly treatment of girl children in this country may have a lot to do with money. There is a well-known cliché that says - “The value of a girl goes down every time the value of gold goes up.” Girls are considered a liability, because of the expensive dowries that have to be paid at their weddings. Even the poorest of peasants are under tremendous peer pressure to organize lavish weddings, often by taking out big loans. It is to save high marriage expenses that many of our baby girls are being poisoned, suffocated, drowned, starved or simply abandoned.

The going rate for renting a wife is said to be around 7000 rupees.    

China's Dark Secret

Female infanticide and foeticide is a problem confined not just to India; the practice finds prevalence in many other countries of the region. In China, for example, it is imperative to have male children, as boys are thought to be the ones who bring honor to the ancestors by carrying on the family name. A family without a male child is never considered complete. This preference for male children has led to approximately 10,000 female infants being killed each year. In addition to that there is a rampant abortion of female fetuses. All of which has resulted in a sex ratio of 131 males to 100 females in the country.

In rural areas of China the ratio of male population is even higher; in one county, the ratio of live male births to female births in 1995 was 316 males to 100 females. Chinese Government’s “one child per couple” policy has increased the pressure on Chinese parents to make sure that their only child is a male. Many Chinese parents use ultrasound scanners to detect the sex of the fetus and if the fetus is found to be a female, they have an abortion done. Ultrasound is illegal in China, but there is a flourishing trade in ultrasound clinics that continue to provide such facilities. By the end of the century it is estimated that there will be an excess of 90 million unmarried men.