What was our immediate response to further decline in
the child sex ratio in India? Within days of the provisional 2011 Census
results (March-April 2011), the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare
reconstituted the Central Supervisory Board for the Pre-conception and
Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex selection) Act 1994 ,
which had not met for 3 years, and on November 30, 2011 the Ministry of
Women and Child Development formed a Sectoral Innovation Council for
Child Sex Ratio. But we are busy dousing flames in haste without looking
to dampen the source. This fire-fighting approach is unlikely to
succeed, because putting out fires in one district virtually ensures its
spread to another. That is what has happened.
The
decline in child sex ratio (0-6 years) from 945 in 1991 to 927 in 2001
and further to 914 females per 1,000 males in 2011 — the lowest since
independence — is cause for alarm, but also occasion for serious policy
re-think. Over the last two decades, the rate of decline appears
to have slowed but what began as an urban phenomenon has spread to rural
areas. This is despite legal provisions, incentive-based schemes, and
media messages. Indians across the country, bridging class and caste
divides, are deliberately ensuring that girls are simply not born. This
artificial alteration of our demographic landscape has implications for
not only gender justice and equality but also social violence, human
development and democracy.
What is wrong?
So
what are we doing wrong — both in the discourse we have created and in
the policy route we have chosen to walk? To start with, we have chosen
to target one symptom (practice of sex selection), instead of evolving a
comprehensive national policy response to a deeply resistant ailment
(son preference/daughter aversion and low status of women in India).
State policy has, in the main, consisted of seeking to stem the supply
of technology that enables sex selection through application of the law —
the PCPNDT Act bans the use of diagnostic techniques for determining
the sex of a foetus. The rationale (framed within an inverted
demand-supply paradigm) is that stopping supply of the technology will
reduce the demand — for determining the sex of the foetus and aborting
if it is female. So far (not withstanding wide publicity about the
PCPNDT Act, including signboards in every clinic, hospital and nursing
home), this hasn't panned out as planned.
Meanwhile,
this singular focus on PCPNDT has triggered an unhealthy discourse
beyond what the law actually bans (using medical diagnostics to
determine the sex of the foetus) to the next step, i.e. the act of
abortion. Over the last few years, the hunt for aborted female foetuses
appears to have become legitimate media pastime and reportage consists
chiefly of stories about “foetuses' foeticide” and “foetal remains.”
Clearly, the goriness of the phenomenon meets the media's need for just a
tad bit of sensation (foetal remains found in gunny bags outside quack
clinics, in the fields, in the dark depths of deep wells, etc.).
While
national attention on this issue is welcome, this is complex terrain.
On the one hand is the right of females to be born, and of society to
protect and preserve a gender balance. On the other hand lies a woman's
right under the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act (enacted in 1971,
revised in 1975) to have a safe and legal abortion as part of a whole
gamut of reproductive rights. In our zeal to create an environment
against one type of abortion (of a foetus only because it is
female), we end up stigmatising all abortions. Access to safe and legal
abortion for Indian women is already severely limited, and this
environment will not improve things. Indeed the very word ‘foeticide'
i.e. ‘killing' of the foetus (used often without the qualifying ‘female foeticide') dents abortion rights.
Tackling the demand side
As
for tackling the demand side — i.e. addressing the complex reasons that
son preference-daughter aversion is so prevalent — our policy response
has included marking the National Girl Child Day (declared in 2009) on
January 24, sporadically putting up billboards at major intersections
telling us to ‘love the girl child,' ‘beti bachao', ‘stop killing
girls', and a slew of ill-conceived conditional cash transfer schemes
to incentivise the birth of girls at both the Centre and the State
level.
A 2010 desk review of 15 conditional cash
transfer schemes (Dhan Lakshmi, Ladli, Beti Hai Anmol, Kanyadan, and
others) conducted by TV Sekher of IIPS for UNFPA is revealing. Most of
them promised relatively small amounts at maturity, had complex
conditions (immunisation, school enrolment, institutional delivery,
sterilisation, among others), gave cash amounts at the age of 18 (for
dowry?), and were aimed at poor or BPL families. Quite apart from the
objectionable attempt to arm twist every imaginable kind of ‘desired'
behaviour (immunise, educate, sterilise) in return for small sums of
money, the big problem is that these schemes are targeted largely at
poor families. This is not a poor or BPL-only phenomenon. Small cash
amounts are unlikely to make an iota of difference to families who have
resources to pay for sex selective technology. On this issue, Indian
policymakers, accustomed to ‘targeting' the poor (i.e. BPL) need to
bravely enter the unfamiliar terrain of targeting the not-so-poor, the
upwardly mobile, the wealthy.
The advocacy and
communications around this issue, by both the government and NGOs, has
taken the ‘love the girl child' route. It is unexceptionable,
politically correct, and ensconced comfortably in a language of
patriarchal protectiveness (ladki ko bachao). Of course, everyone
likes to ‘love little girls in pigtails,' including MPs who will defeat
the Women's Reservation Bill time and again in Parliament.
Cultural attitudes
The
problem of ‘demand' goes far deeper than our communication or policy
solutions seem to suggest. Sex selection is located at the complex
interface of cultural attitudes, patriarchal prejudice, socioeconomic
pressures, the changes wrought by modernity, and the commercialisation
and misuse of modern medical technology. The impact of modernity and
materialism on the decreased valuation of females i.e. enhanced daughter
aversion, the lack of old-age social security i.e. son preference,
increasing violence against women, property rights, inheritance laws —
each of these and more play a role. We must demand of ourselves an
equally comprehensive national policy on the sex ratio, capable of
addressing each contributory factor.
South Korea & China
South
Korea has beaten the problem by adopting a comprehensive national
response. China, whether or not we agree with its particular national
framework, at least has one. The Chinese government adopted a series of
concurrent policies, strategic actions and laws to promote gender
equality, increase female workforce participation, ensure old age social
security, in addition to banning the use of sex selective diagnostics. The country's sex ratio is showing small signs of improvement.
Finally,
a national communication strategy is key to a national policy response,
and this must rest on acknowledging two things — one, behaviour change
communication is a specialised field whose expertise must be harnessed,
and two, the nature of reproductive decision-making in India is changing
along with immense changes in the Indian family structure. A
communication strategy needs to identify primary targets (decision-makers) and secondary targets (decision supporters),
and reach them through strategic media platforms — traditional,
conventional and new media. As for the core content of messages, a lot
can be said, but for now let us agree to go beyond billboard
exhortations to ‘love the girl child.' And recognise that the girl will
grow up to be a woman one day.
