For India's daughters, a dark birth day

[Meredith]

I never know what to say about such articles, but I always feel like they should be posted.  So, here you go.

For India's daughters, a dark birth day

Infanticide and sex-selective abortion yield a more skewed gender ratio.

By Uma Girish, Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor

MADRAS, INDIA - The oleander plant yields a bright, pleasant flower, but also a milky sap that, if ingested, can be a deadly poison. It's one of the methods families use to kill newborn girls in the Salem District of Tamil Nadu, a part of India notorious for female infanticide.

 Though the government has battled the practice for decades, India's gender imbalance has worsened in recent years. Any progress toward halting infanticide, it seems, has been offset by a rise in sex-selective abortions. Too many couples - aided by medical technology, unethical doctors, and weak enforcement of laws banning abortion on the basis of gender - are electing to end a pregnancy if the fetus is female.

The consequence of female infanticide and, more recently, abortion is India's awkwardly skewed gender ratio, among the most imbalanced in the world. The ratio among children up to the age of 6 was 962 girls per 1,000 boys in 1981, but 20 years later the inequity was actually worse: 927 girls per 1,000 boys.

Infanticide is illegal in India (though never prosecuted), and laws are also in place to stop sex- selective abortions. But in some places, national rules don't hold enough sway to overcome local religious and social customs - which remain biased in favor of sons over daughters.

"Factors like dowry, imbalance in the employment sector whereby the male is seen as breadwinner, and societal pressure to abort female fetuses conspire to increase the antigirl bias," says Ajay K. Tripathi of the Advanced Studies in Public Health Programme, of the Institute of Health Systems in Hyderabad. Government and the medical profession, he says, need to put more resources - and more political will - into strengthening and enforcing the laws.

A case in point is legislation - introduced last year but now stalled - that would prohibit all genetic-counseling facilities, clinics, and labs from divulging the sex of the fetus. The hope is that if parents don't know "it's a girl," fewer will resort to abortion. But the proposal, which would amend a 1994 law, is opposed by medical groups. They argue that technology used to monitor fetal health - such as ultrasound scans and amniocentesis - cannot be put under such intense scrutiny.

Others, though, see another reason for the opposition: Abortion is a lucrative business that many doctors do not want to see curtailed. "Abortions are a low-risk, high-profit business. As a specialist in fetal medicine, I can tell you that no pregnant woman would suffer if the ultrasound test were banned," says Puneet Bedi, a gynecologist at Apollo Hospitals in New Delhi. "Right now, it is used to save 1 out of 20,000 fetuses and kill 20 out of every 100 because [it reveals that the baby] is the wrong gender."

India stipulates that only a government hospital, registered facility, or medical practitioner with appropriate qualifications may perform an abortion. The reality, however, is that only about 15 percent of all abortions take place under such circumstances, according to the Indian Medical Association. About 11.2 million illegal abortions are performed each year off the record. Such abortions are often "female feticide," experts say.

In Salem district, for instance, signs posted in towns reinforce the societal message: "Pay 500 rupees and save 50,000 rupees later," a suggestion that aborting a female fetus now could save a fortune in wedding expenses in the future.

Salem district, a mostly rural part of Tamil Nadu, has a longstanding reputation as a deathtrap for baby girls. The Vellala Gounder community, the dominant caste there, owns most of the land and is intent on retaining property rights within the family. Sons represent lineage; daughters marry and relocate to their husbands' homes. As a result, local women, like Lakshmi, who gave birth to a girl early last year, may refuse to nurse their newborns. They leave it to midwives or mothers-in-law to administer the oleander sap, say anti-infanticide activists.

Nearly 60 percent of girls born in Salem District are killed within three days of birth, according to the local social welfare department. That doesn't count the growing number of abortions there to ensure a girl baby won't be carried to term.

Amid such stubborn statistics, activists are at work to counter the forces of tradition. A focus of their work: improving the standing and self-image of women themselves.

Community Services Guild (CSG), a nongovernmental organization, works with rural women in particular to discourage female feticide. One of CSG's interventions targets women who already have at least one girl. Now 20 years old, the program sends workers to visit these mothers, teaching them and their daughters skills that contribute income to their families (such as basket-weaving or selling produce) and reeducating them about the value of girls to society.

"Educating the new-generation girl - and empowering her with the skills necessary for economic independence - is the only long-term solution," says G. Prasad, CSG deputy director. Though CSG works in a patriarchal culture where female inferiority is ingrained, the group encourages women to become decisionmakers.

In pockets of India where female infanticide persists, the practice is rooted in a complex mix of economic, social, and cultural factors. Parents' preference for a boy derives from the widespread belief that a son lighting his parents' funeral pyre will ensure that their souls ascend to heaven; that he will be a provider in their later years (India has no form of social security); and that he will preserve the family inheritance.

Conversely, a daughter is considered an economic burden. Pressure to conform can be intense in rural areas, and some families borrow heavily to pay for the rituals prescribed for a girl - the ear-piercing ceremony, wedding jewelry, dowry, and presents for the groom's family on every Hindu festival.

The Tamil Nadu government has started several programs to protect girls - with mixed results. One urged families to hand over their baby girls to local officials, who saw that they were adopted by childless couples. Between May 2001 and January 2003, officials received 361 baby girls. An informal survey by CSG, however, found that many women would abort rather than have a baby and give her up for adoption.

Tamil Nadu's "Girl Protection" program may be more practical. Here, the government opens a bank account in a girl's name at her birth, depositing between 15,000 and 22,000 rupees during her childhood, depending on the number of girls in the family.

"The only way to wipe out this evil is by an attitudinal shift," says CSG's Mr. Prasad. "Educate a girl beyond eighth grade and encourage her to find her voice."

[paok]

Very interesting article.
Mainly for two reasons.
First of all it refers to abortion and infanticide in the same context and under the prism of gender observation
Secondly it is an aricle contributed to the "Christian Science Monitor",not the Indian press,if i understood that corectly.

Many thoughts go through my head whenever i read something like this.
What stays with me eventually  is a feeling.
The feeling of helplessness when learning about tragic injustice(as i perceive the notion of justice) in this world.

My only comment is my effort  to try to always remember  two sentences out of the article
1."The only way to wipe out this evil is by an attitudinal shift.Educate a girl beyond
eighth grade and encourage her to find her voice."
2."Educating the new-generation girl - and empowering her with the skills necessary for economic independence - is the only long-term solution."

[Sanju_Bhai]

Bad news for the little boys, too, in a society that insists "no life without a wife".  Essentially society is telling them "we won't kill you but get used to being single".

[Prem Rogue]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4592890.stm


India 'loses 10m female births'


More than 10m female births may have been lost to abortion and sex selection in the past 20 years, according to research in The Lancet medical journal.

Researchers in India and Canada said prenatal selection and selective abortion was causing the loss of 500,000 girls a year.

Their research was based on a national survey of 1.1m households in 1998.

The researchers said the "girl deficit" was more common among educated women but did not vary according to religion.

The unusual gender balance in India has been known about for some time.

In most countries, women slightly outnumber men, but separate research for the year 2001 showed that for every 1,000 male babies born in India, there were just 933 girls.

Ultrasound

The latest research is by Prabhat Jha of St Michael's Hospital at the University of Toronto, Canada, and Rajesh Kumar of the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Research in Chandigarh, India.

They found that there was an increasing tendency to select boys when previous children had been girls.

In cases where the preceding child was a girl, the ratio of girls to boys in the next birth was 759 to 1,000.

This fell even further when the two preceding children were both girls. Then the ratio for the third child born was just 719 girls to 1,000 boys.

However, for a child following the birth of a male child, the gender ratio was roughly equal.

Prabhat Jha said conservative estimates in the research suggested half a million girls were being lost each year.

"If this practice has been common for most of the past two decades since access to ultrasound became widespread, then a figure of 10m missing female births would not be unreasonable."

Experts in India say female foeticide is mostly linked to socio-economic factors.

The girl child has traditionally been considered inferior and a liability.

It is an idea that many say carries over from the time India was a predominantly agrarian society where boys were considered an extra pair of hands on the farm.

Last year the well-known religious leader and social activist, Swami Agnivesh, began a campaign across five northern and western states against female foeticide.

"There's no other form of violence that's more painful, more abhorrent, more shameful," he said.

[albatross]

Very interesting article.
Mainly for two reasons.
First of all it refers to abortion and infanticide in the same context and under the prism of gender observation
Secondly it is an aricle contributed to the "Christian Science Monitor",not the Indian press,if i understood that corectly.

Just a side note but the CSM is a small but highly respected paper in the US- it consistently wins pulitzer prizes and is respected for its objectivity.

I wonder if the lopsided male to female ratios will result in this:

Youth-snatching a growing industry in China
Boston Globe, United States - 17 hours ago
... Several other factors drive demand. Buying a boy and ''legalizing" the adoption with bribes often are easier than going through China's formal adoption system.
http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/articles/2006/01/08/youth_snatching_a_growing_industry_in_china/

[sweetfriend]

http://www.islamicity.com/m/news_frame.asp?Frame=1&referenceID=24169

[albatross]

http://www.islamicity.com/m/news_frame.asp?Frame=1&referenceID=24169

Question does anyone know how this breaks down along religious lines? Does this form of infanticide/aborotion occur only in Hindu families, or Muslim ones as well?

[James]

Albatross, I unfortunately don't have any statistics, but the article that Janasheen provided did have the following to say:

Researchers from the University of Toronto in Canada and the Institute of Medical Education in Chandigarh, India, studied almost 134,000 births in 1997 among 6 million people living in 1.1 million households who are part of the ongoing Indian National Survey. They found the sex of the previous child born affected the sex ratio of the current birth, with fewer girls born to families who had yet to have a boy.

The effect was more than twice as great among educated mothers compared with those who were illiterate, but did not vary by religion.

It makes sense because the factors that cause female selective abortion are cultural rather than religious.

[albatross]

Albatross, I unfortunately don't have any statistics, but the article that Janasheen provided did have the following to say:

Researchers from the University of Toronto in Canada and the Institute of Medical Education in Chandigarh, India, studied almost 134,000 births in 1997 among 6 million people living in 1.1 million households who are part of the ongoing Indian National Survey. They found the sex of the previous child born affected the sex ratio of the current birth, with fewer girls born to families who had yet to have a boy.

The effect was more than twice as great among educated mothers compared with those who were illiterate, but did not vary by religion.

It makes sense because the factors that cause female selective abortion are cultural rather than religious.

THanks, though I would imagine that female infanticide would be higher with Hindus rather than Muslims.

[Totally Basmatic!]

Albatross, I unfortunately don't have any statistics, but the article that Janasheen provided did have the following to say:

Researchers from the University of Toronto in Canada and the Institute of Medical Education in Chandigarh, India, studied almost 134,000 births in 1997 among 6 million people living in 1.1 million households who are part of the ongoing Indian National Survey. They found the sex of the previous child born affected the sex ratio of the current birth, with fewer girls born to families who had yet to have a boy.

The effect was more than twice as great among educated mothers compared with those who were illiterate, but did not vary by religion.

It makes sense because the factors that cause female selective abortion are cultural rather than religious.

THanks, though I would imagine that female infanticide would be higher with Hindus rather than Muslims.

One of the first things the prophet Mohammed attacked concerning societal reform was female infanticide.

[Krishnan]

Albatross, I unfortunately don't have any statistics, but the article that Janasheen provided did have the following to say:

Researchers from the University of Toronto in Canada and the Institute of Medical Education in Chandigarh, India, studied almost 134,000 births in 1997 among 6 million people living in 1.1 million households who are part of the ongoing Indian National Survey. They found the sex of the previous child born affected the sex ratio of the current birth, with fewer girls born to families who had yet to have a boy.

The effect was more than twice as great among educated mothers compared with those who were illiterate, but did not vary by religion.

It makes sense because the factors that cause female selective abortion are cultural rather than religious.

THanks, though I would imagine that female infanticide would be higher with Hindus rather than Muslims.

One of the first things the prophet Mohammed attacked concerning societal reform was female infanticide.

I agree with the person who said its more culture than religion, its just more practical to have a son ... i think the dowrey aspect in the article is more culture than religus anyways.

[albatross]

One of the first things the prophet Mohammed attacked concerning societal reform was female infanticide.

same with Christianity - it was common when the west was pagan, that is why I was wondering if there was a difference.

[lydia]

So the Matrubhumi film is fimly grounded in something very real.

[Darshana]

I wonder if the facilitation of giving up girl babies for adoption would ever take hold in India, as it has in China.

I don't know how this got set up, so that westerners, or Americans anyhow, are able to adopt Chinese girl babies.  I am guessing that China already had some kind of infrastructure of orphanages to which these babies were taken, from which they could then be adopted out of the country.  I am thining India does not.

Also in China this has to do with the law that allows you only one child, with an exception for some rural people, and the Chinese "need" for a son to take care of them in their old age.  Or anyhow that is what I have picked up, I realize since I am not Chinese I may have it wrong.

[crazyone]

I don't know how this got set up, so that westerners, or Americans anyhow, are able to adopt Chinese girl babies. I am guessing that China already had some kind of infrastructure of orphanages to which these babies were taken, from which they could then be adopted out of the country. I am thining India does not.

You're right that India doesn't have the whole 'infrastructure' of orphanages from which westerners can adopt that China or some Eastern Europeans do.  But this is mostly purposeful, as India's adoption laws establish a sort of hierarchy for adoption--the first priority is for Indians in India, next for Indians abroad, and last is for non-Indians abroad.  It's very difficult for Westerners to adopt for this reason, because the government doesn't want children being taken out of the country especially if they are adopted by non-Indians.  Interestingly enough I have heard of both Indian boys and girls being adopted in the US.  One suspicion I have is that many of those who are adopted by Westerners are disabled (of either gender), because those are the children that most Indians looking to adopt would not want.

[cissyboo]

I am resurrecting this older topic because the BBC, today had an article on British Indian women going flying to India to abort female foetuses.
Britain's unwanted girls

Cultural pressure to have a boy is leading some British women of Asian origin to travel to India for abortions to avoid having a girl.

Among them is Meena, whose name has been changed to protect her identity.

She has three daughters under 13. But says she has been made to feel a failure for not producing a son.
Meena says Indian culture can still exert a huge pressure on women to have boys - to carry the family name and because girls are expensive - and that the pressure exists on Indian women living in Britain too.

"It is all up to the husband and it's usually the husband's side of the family who - you know - are putting the pressure on."

It is on the male to produce male children-he's the contributor of the oh-so-essential Y chromosome.  It's sad that the women get blamed for the lack of sons-and it's not just an Asian issue either.  My cousin, whom is married to a man the epitome of WASP-yness, has 4 girls.  His family blames her for their baby's lack of sons, because she had two sisters and a brother, while he is from an all boy family-so it MUST be her fault.

[ChandniRoshni]

Thanks for linking to that story and resurrecting this topic, cissyboo.  I had been thinking about the plight of mothers of daughters since I read
this piece in the International Herald Tribune:

In India, a terrible place to be born a girl

By Amelia Gentleman   Published: November 30, 2007

MACHRIHWA, India: The birth of a boy in Machrihwa is celebrated with the purchase of sweetmeats, distributed with joy to fellow villagers.

The birth of a girl is, for the most part, not celebrated at all.

Women in this village are not eager to dwell on the subject, but many of those with daughters grudgingly admit that worse than the pain of childbirth was the misery of realizing that they had delivered a girl.

Juganti Prasad, 30, remembers the reproachful silence that settled over the room where she gave birth to her third daughter. Her mother-in-law handed her the child, and said curtly, "It's a girl, again," before leaving her.

"There was no one even to give me a glass of water," Prasad said. "No one bothered to look after me or feed me because it was a girl."
As she lay recovering, she could hear relatives in the next-door hut lamenting the calamity. A few weeks afterward, her husband threw her and their three daughters out of his home.

A five-hour drive along ill-maintained roads from Lucknow, the capital of the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, the surrounding district of Shravasti is, according to calculations by Unicef, the worst place in India to be born a girl.

Across large swaths of rural northern India, away from the rapid development that is tearing up traditional attitudes toward women in the cities, India's economic boom is virtually invisible and prospects for young girls remain highly restricted.

In November, India was ranked 114th out of 128 nations in a gender-gap survey conducted by the World Economic Forum, scoring poorly on equality in education, health and the economy. Unicef used three statistical parameters - the age at which girls are married off, the level of female literacy and the imbalance between the number of boys and girls - when it judged that there is no unluckier spot than Shravasti for a girl.

The bolded sentences are the recent findings that prompted the article;  the remainder of the article has more analysis and many other heart-breaking stories.

I was disturbed by the story, and disgusted that in the print edition the front-page headline was something like "In Shravasti, no thanking heaven for little girls."  It echoes the saccharine song "Thank heaven for little girls" sung by Maurice Chevalier, and I thought its flippant tone was a totally inappropriate way to introduce the article.

[Anamika]

A new BBC article on this sad topic:

India baby girl deaths 'increase'
_{Saturday, 21 June 2008 05:01 UK}

The number of girls born and surviving in India has hit an all time low compared to boys, ActionAid says.

A report by the UK charity says increasing numbers of female foetuses were being aborted and baby girls deliberately neglected and left to die.
In one site in the Punjab state, there are just 300 girls to every 1,000 boys among higher caste families, it says. ActionAid says India faces a "bleak" future if it does not end its practice of cultural preference for boys.

Girls 'condemned'

ActionAid teamed up with Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC) to produce the Disappearing Daughters report.
More than 6,000 households in sites across five states in north-western India were interviewed and statistical comparisons were made with national census date.
Under "normal" circumstances, there should be about 950 girls for every 1,000 boys, the charity said. But it said that in three of the five sites, that number was below 800.
In four of the five sites surveyed, the proportion of girls to boys had declined since a 2001 census, the report said.

The research also found that ratios of girls to boys were declining fastest in comparatively prosperous urban areas. ActionAid suggested the increasing use of ultrasound technology may be a factor in the trend.

The document says that Indian woman are put under intense pressure to produce sons, in a culture that predominantly views girls as a burden rather than an asset. It says many families now use ultrasound scans and abort female foetuses, despite the existence of the 1994 law banning gender selection and selective abortion.

The charity also blames other illegal practices - such as allowing the umbilical cord to become infected - for the growing gender imbalance.

"The real horror of the situation is that, for women, avoiding having daughters is a rational choice. But for wider society it's creating an appalling and desperate state of affairs," Laura Turquet, women's rights policy official at ActionAid said.
"In the long term, cultural attitudes need to change. India must address economic and social barriers including property rights, marriage dowries and gender roles that condemn girls before they are even born.

"If we don't act now the future looks bleak," Ms Turquet said.

Some 10 million female foetuses have been aborted in India in the past 20 years, the British medical journal the Lancet has said.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7466916.stm

[**Sam**]

It is on the male to produce male children-he's the contributor of the oh-so-essential Y chromosome.  It's sad that the women get blamed for the lack of sons-and it's not just an Asian issue either.  My cousin, whom is married to a man the epitome of WASP-yness, has 4 girls.  His family blames her for their baby's lack of sons, because she had two sisters and a brother, while he is from an all boy family-so it MUST be her fault.

I wonder how much of this is just pure ignorance about the science of genetics. I have hear about the exact thing you describe in Iranian families, but only in the previous generations (my grandmother's generation, for example), or in rural areas where people are uneducated. There is a phrase "dokhtar-zaa" where "dokhtar" means "daughter" and "zaa" is a form of the verb to give birth to. That's what they used to call women who gave birth to "too many" girls, ignorant of the fact that the male chromosomes determine the sex of the baby and the woman has no biological role in it. Thankfully, that is no longer the case in Iran, but I wonder if the idea persists in certain places in India where education on this subject is still lacking and the women are still "blamed" for the gender of the child.

This is so sad, especially to see that two years after Meredith posted that article the news is worse now...

[Darshana]

The basic tragedy is for India of course, and for the girls who die as babies etc.  An additional thing, I wish India would relax its position about out-of-country adoption, as these murdered girl babies would actually be wanted and loved elsewhere.  It wouldn't do India ay "direct" good, its boys will still be left having to marry outsiders or forget about reproduciton, but it would be potentially positive to keep the girls alive and to give children to people who want them but can't have them.

From another point of view frankly I can see outsider marriage as a not-bad thing, as it will inevitably dilute this culture, which needs something to change it re: things like getting rid of girls, maintaining a caste system, etc.

[Ashish]

Unfortunately, tragedy also haunts girls who survive who bear brunt of desperate men (forced polyandry) and increased criminalization of weddings. Some smart ones (women), of course, are able to take advantage of this situation, but they are in minority. Regarding, outsider marriage diluting this mindset - it seems unlikely since this is prevalent in most of prominent castes and groups. I see the point of making adoptions easier, but can they be ever significant in number to make a nationwide difference (of course, difference in life of one individual is still worthwhile)?

The basic tragedy is for India of course, and for the girls who die as babies etc.  An additional thing, I wish India would relax its position about out-of-country adoption, as these murdered girl babies would actually be wanted and loved elsewhere.  It wouldn't do India ay "direct" good, its boys will still be left having to marry outsiders or forget about reproduciton, but it would be potentially positive to keep the girls alive and to give children to people who want them but can't have them.

From another point of view frankly I can see outsider marriage as a not-bad thing, as it will inevitably dilute this culture, which needs something to change it re: things like getting rid of girls, maintaining a caste system, etc.

[Amba]

From another point of view frankly I can see outsider marriage as a not-bad thing, as it will inevitably dilute this culture, which needs something to change it re: things like getting rid of girls, maintaining a caste system, etc.

I remember reading an article a while ago about women from Kerala marrying Punjabi men. The women were used to more egalitarian gender roles, and were disinclined to adhere to customs like purdah and veiling. Those women were better educated than their husbands, and were thus able to exercise a certain amount of power in their relationships; by contrast, "outside" brides from places like Assam and Orissa are often treated horribly.

[derketchup]

I think the problem is that the culture hasn't changed with the times...  and it will either learn to adapt in a way that continues the culture, or the culture will die off or be mortally wounded.

India has so many dynamics regarding its cultural groups (and there are so many of them!).  I can see traces of a matriarchal society... traces of Islam... traces of the British Raj... and of course still a hefty influence from the various types of Hinduism.  Now that "Westernism" has entered the picture (and I know it has for years) hopefully things work out.

[dil ke rani]

I am resurrecting this older topic because the BBC, today had an article on British Indian women going flying to India to abort female foetuses.
Britain's unwanted girls
It is on the male to produce male children-he's the contributor of the oh-so-essential Y chromosome.  It's sad that the women get blamed for the lack of sons-and it's not just an Asian issue either.  My cousin, whom is married to a man the epitome of WASP-yness, has 4 girls.  His family blames her for their baby's lack of sons, because she had two sisters and a brother, while he is from an all boy family-so it MUST be her fault.

I stumbled upon this story while at work and it just made me sad...that any life could be summed up by financial means. India is a different country and as such i dont feel I can farely judge however much I do not agree with the practice. I do remember seeing a programme on the BBC once detailing this phenomenon. To watch women not nurse their babies was a truly sad sight.

I think the blame being on the woman is part of the problem. Perhaps a lack of education could be the cause. I spoke to a woman about how she felt having two girls, and she told me about the ultrasound, the planned abortion, that was only halted because she was found to be almost 6months gone. Then how she blamed herself because she didnt take the medicines to ensure she had a boy before her first trimester ended? I didnt try to explain as it really isnt my place but the fact an unscrupolous doctor would charge for medicines which surely they know could have no effect is horrendous!! Has any one else heard of things like this?

[kragey]

The Suffering of Eve, by Jim Landers.

Bhanwari Devi learned about life as a village woman of India wrapped in dust, cooking smoke, and faded garments mean to last a lifetime. She was engaged before she was born, married at age seven and the mother of four when she was about twenty-five.

In 1985, a strong personality won her the start of a very difficult education. Social workers took her to Jaipur, the cpaital fo the state of Rajasthan, for two and a half weeks of training in the rights and privileges the law offers Indian women.

Bhanwari came back full of ideas. She urged the women of Bhateri to learn to read. She warned the men that child marriage is illegal. When she told the police about the planned wedding of a one-year-old girl to a two-year-old boy, the men of the girl's family vowed that Bhanwari would never again raise her head in the village.

Five of them came after her on a September evening as she was weeding her field.

"They raped me," Bhanwari says. "They made my husband watch."

In a determined, sad voice, she tells a story that says much about violence and women in India, a country where discrimination is deadly and perhaps 30 million females are "missing."

Bhanwari says she doesn't know her age. Her husband, Mohun Lal, guesses that his wife is 36 or 37 years old. Their youngest daughter, Rameshwari, is thirteen. Seven years ago, she married a boy who is now a laborer at a nearby village.

"I was not a social worker then," Bhanwari apologizes. "If I had this awareness then, I would not have allowed it."

India's constitution requires equal pay for equal work by men and women. Its laws ban wife-beating and mental cruelty, child marriage and dowry, sexual enslavement, rape, and sexual harassment, known as "Eve teasing."

But much of the law fails under the weight of 3000 of celebrating sons and despising daughters.

Sons inherit. Sons bring parents wealth, a dowry worth as much as four years of a bride's family's income. A son is also essential in a Hindu family to light a parent's funeral pyre and open the way to heaven.

Some female infants are killed: smothered beneath a placenta, fed poison or abandoned in the wild. More often, they simply get less than their brothers of the food and medicine needed to survive. Among children younger than five, the death rate is three times greater for girls than boys.

British demographers who conducted India's first census in 1901 found whole villages with no girls. They called them "blood-red villages." The census counted 972 females for every 1000 males.

Across India, it has since gotten worse. The sex ratio in the 1991 census was 929 females for every 1000 males. (The US ratio is 1050 women for every 1000 men.)

Tradition and technology combine today so that a female in India is in dagner from the moment she is conceived. Hundreds of thousands of Indian parents use sex-determination tests to plan families of sons. Amniocentesis or ultra-sound tests showing a female fetus are followed by abortions.

The practice began in the late 1970s. The number of abortions performed because of sex-determination tests since then is unknown. By June 1982, The Times of India estimated that 78000 such abortions had taken place.

The practice became a national issue in 1982, after the male fetus of a prominent Bombay official was aborted by mistake.

The birth of a girl may bring regret, even grief, to her parents. One New Dehli mother of two girls described it as giving birth to a stone.

Discrimination is such that the Indian government's 1992 action plan for girls declared, "She has the right to survive," as its first premise.

The plan says mothers are more likely to breast-feed sons than daughters. Boys are more likely than girls to get treatment for the diarrhea that kills 1.5 million Indian children every year. Boys are more likely to be inoculated against disease and much more likely to go to school.

The typical Indian girl lives her life in a farm village. She grows up illiterate and with two-thirds the calories she needs to achieve her height and weight potential.

One in four dies before age 15. The others marry in their teens. They have 8 or 9 pregnancies, 6 live births and raise 4 children before dying at age 59.

More than 5000 Indian women are burned to death each year by husbands and in-laws seeking higher dowries. (A widower is able to remarry and collect a second dowry.) Dowry itself has been illegal since 1961, but the practice is increasing.

Women's rights advocates say that they hoped Indira Gandhi would act vigorously to enforce the laws protecting women during her tenure as prime minister. But Mrs. Gandhi, who dominated Indian political life until her assassination in 1984, was unsympathetic to the feminist movement. She joked about her male colleagues that she was "the only man in my Cabinet."

Mrs. Gandhi's son, Rajiv, was more active as prime minister in bringing women into government before his assassination in 1991. He created a Ministry for Women and Social Welfare and supported the grass-roots programs that ultimately led Bhanwari Devi into government service as a village worker in Bhateri.

Bhateri sits behind a range of red and chalk bluffs, its small huts spilled in the hollows. Goods come to Bhateri in carts pulled by camels or on the backs of elephants. Trucks are rare. A car attracts a crowd of gawkers.

Bhanwari and Mohun Lal, her husband, have a 2-acre field and a milk cow. Their oldest daughter, married when she was 14, lives in an other village. Daughter Rameshawari and her 2 brothers still live at home. Each year, followed by the counsel of astrologers, villages throughout Rajasthan arrange mass weddings among brides and grooms as young as 1 year old.

"She was 7, and I was 9," Mr. Lal says with a smile. "We were engaged before we were even born."

They began living together when she was about 14.

Since 1995, India has required a girl to reach age 18 before she can marry.

Rajasthani village children are usually married by their 10th birthday. A girl continues to live in her father's house, at least until her first menstrual period. Then it is the father's duty to inform the boy's family that his daughter is sexually amture and ready to live with her husband.

"When a girl's sent away for marriage at such a young age, she'll start having children very young as well. That means more mothers will die giving birth, and more babies will die from premature birth or other weaknesses from having such a young mother," says Kanchan Mathur, one of the social scientists who sponsored Bhanwari and other village women in Rajasthan's Women's Development Program.

"Some of these girls are just 10 years old. Their education comes to a halt when they're married," Mrs. Mathur says. "And what do these girls know of sex? They have no idea what's happening to them."





I copied this out of "Travelers' Tales Guides: India", so please excuse my typos. I was looking down in to my lap the whole time.