Why infanticide in india

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Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name. Challenges still remain However, weak law enforcement and easy access to ultrasonography fail to curb this practice. Sex-selective abortion and sex ratio at birth Unfavourable sex ratio, according to the report, is a result of sex-selective abortion, childhood neglect of girls and infanticide. South Korea: a success story According to the ACHR report, South Korea is one of the very few nations where the imbalanced sex ratio has been reversed.

Nepalaese women under pressure to bear a son According to a survey by a Nepal-based NGO, Center for Research on Environment Health and Population Activities, 81 per cent women, whose first child was a daughter, prefer son. How is India trying to tackle female infanticide? The under-reporting under the MTP Act has also been a problem.

Subscribe to Weekly Newsletter :. Donate Now. Read 1 Comments Post a Comment. Another anthropologist, Kristen Hawkes , has criticised both of these theories. On the one hand, opposing Harris, she says both that the quickest way to get more male warriors would have been to have more females as child-bearers and that having more females in a village would increase the potential for marriage alliances with other villages. Against the procreative imperative theory she points out that the corollary to well-off elites such as those in northern India wanting to maximise reproduction is that poor people would want to minimise it and thus in theory should have practiced male infanticide, which it seems they did not.

There is no data for the sex ratio in India prior to the British colonial era. Reliant as the British were on local high-caste communities for the collection of taxes and the maintenance of law and order, the administrators were initially reluctant to peer to deeply into their private affairs, such as the practice of infanticide.

Although this did change in the s, the reluctance reappeared following the cathartic events of the Indian rebellion of , which caused government by the East India Company to be supplanted by the British Raj. The British made their observations from a distance and never mixed with their Indian subjects to understand their poverty, frustrations, life or culture at close hand. Aside from numerous reports and correspondence on infanticide from colonial officials, [10] there was also documentation from Christian missionaries.

They sent letters back to Britain announcing their missionary accomplishments and characterising the culture as savage, ignorant and depraved. A review of scholarship by Miller has shown that the majority of female infanticides in India during the colonial period occurred in the north-west, and that it was widespread although not all groups carried out this practice. David Arnold , a member of the subaltern studies group who has used a lot of contemporary sources, says that various methods of outright infanticide were used, including reputedly including poisoning with opium , strangulation and suffocation.

Poisonous substances such as the root of the plumbago rosea and arsenic were used for abortion, with the latter also ironically being used as an aphrodisiac and cure for male impotence. The act of direct infanticide among Rajputs was usually performed by women, often the mother herself or a nurse. Major famines occurred in India every five to eight years in the 19th- and early 20th-centuries, [27] [28] resulting in millions starving to death.

Many American states now have "safe haven" laws, designated safe drop-off locations where parents can leave unwanted babies. These are usually hospitals, police stations, or fire stations. In France, a woman is allowed to deliver her baby in a hospital and, if she doesn't want to keep it, leave it behind -- no questions asked.

Canada installed its first baby hatch at a hospital in Vancouver. Einsiedeln, a small town in Switzerland, has had a baby hatch for ten years, and even though they've received only two babies in that time, they still feel it worthwhile to keep it open. As the Economist reports , "Now Germany has around places where a mother can either leave her baby -- heated 'baby hatches', usually with an alarm to summon a carer -- or where she can give birth anonymously.

In China some officials are testing what they call "safe islands for babies" and Australia is considering its own safe-haven law. Since , the idea of a baby hatch has been slowly resurrected in India. There are already some baby hatches operating in India, in the state of Tamil Nadu.

A United Nations Population Fund report explains , "Instead of resorting to female infanticide, parents who were unwilling to bring up their female babies could place them anonymously in cradles located in noon meal centres, PHCs, selected orphanages and NGOs. Subsequent to their placement in cradles, babies were to be placed for adoption.

Using the model and experience of the work already done in Tamil Nadu, India could set up a nation-wide system of baby hatches. Of course, key pre-requisites for a baby hatch system to work is that women must know that such safe places exist, where these places are, and that no questions will be asked. Furthermore, the fear to see their daughter suffer and being neglected by the family additionally compels women to engage in practices of sex selection or infanticide.

The gender imbalance in the Indian society is not only reinforcing discrimination and patriarchal dynamics in the society, but is also increasing the risk of forced marriages, rape, or the abduction and the trafficking of girls and women for the purpose of marriage or sexual exploitation.

Ending son preference and sex-selection by empowering girls and women in the Indian society. The Pre-conception and Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques Act , for example, prohibits any use or advertising of prenatal diagnostics for the purpose of sex selection.

However, these laws are often difficult to enforce in practice. It is therefore vital to address the root-causes of son preference and sex selection and to empower girls and women in the Indian society. A strong political commitment on the national and community level, a collaboration with religious organizations, media and the judicial sectors also play a key role.