By Naba Kishor Pujari
We often cheer our breathe at the anecdotes of matrilineal societies that exists in Kerala, Karnataka and Meghalaya in our country where women reportedly enjoy high status and respect in our society, but this itself cannot take away the issues that our daughters face every minute. In India, our rigid patriarchal norms and obsessed preference of Son over daughters have led to an impact that relegates women to secondary status within the household and workplace.
With a population of 225 million, Girls account for 48 per cent of India’s children. However, they face discrimination from the womb. Despite a significant need of structural changes in our policy and implementation modalities, we miss the bus to give our girls an equitable space in the society.
“The Power of Parity: Advancing Women’s Equality in India”, a McKinsey Global Institute report shows poor level of gender parity in Indian society. India’s Gender Parity Score (GPS) is 0.48 where the ideal score should be 1. India ranks 130 of 155 countries on Gender Inequality Index (GII) and have fared only well from Afghanistan among South Asian countries as per the Human Development Report 2015 released by United Nations Development Programme. It can be noted that GII measures the human development costs of gender inequality. A higher GII value 0.563 in the case of India indicates a greater disparity between men and women.
The statistical data has an inevitable connection with ‘Where do our girls miss’. We all witness a broadening gender inequality that starts right from our home. Our socio-cultural norms and economic dependence pattern is in the myth that a son can only take care of their parents in old age but a daughter cant as she certainly will move to her in laws. Similarly, the income of a son would be spent in his own family whereas the income of a daughter; after marriage, would be spent for her in-laws family. This has led the chances of survival of a girl child very less.
Especially, the wealthy and educated ones who have access to ultrasound scans and can afford the price go for sex-selective abortion even though gender-based abortions have been illegal since 1994 in our India with the Pre-conception and Prenatal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act. In another shocking report of ‘Lancet’, a British Medical Journal states that 12 million Indian Girls were aborted in India since 1981. As a fall out, this must have contributed to the Child Sex Ratio to 918 for India in 2011 from 930 in 1981, according to the census data.
The World Bank also in its report reveals that half a million girls go missing at birth each year in India. Even our Women and Child Development Minister Ms. Maneka Gandhi has also confessed that 2000 girls in our country die every day in the womb. Some are born and have pillow on their faces choking them, a statement from the minister itself leaves us to gauge te future threat to our nation even we have the much elated flagship schemes like Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao in our country. It is still not enough.
The National Crime Records Bureau has stated that over the past nine years, 64,000 girls have reportedly been kidnapped. Only from 2005 to 2012, the number of girl’s kidnappings soared 23.2% each year. Minor girls account for almost 85% of all kidnappings in the country.
Undoubtedly, to combat this issue, we have a National level Child Tracking system and Operation Smile Programme that step up the effort to identify, prepare database and rescue the missing children but it needs a thorough rolled out. In terms of legal framework, India still lack a specific law that should focus on missing children and the issue is being dealt with under the category of crime committed against children laid out in IPC and the special and local laws like Immoral Trafficking Prevention Act 1956, Child Labour Prohibition and Regulation Act and Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act 2012 . The Nithari Case in 2007 was a prototype of how the law enforcement agencies treat the missing persons as regular cases and even fail to recognize a set pattern emerging out of the cases.
In this response, Hon’ble Supreme Court while hearing a Writ Petition (Civil) no. 75 of 2012, on 10th May 2013, Bachpan Bachao Andolan vs Union of India has directed to lodge FIR of all the missing children and maintain a Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) to deal with the cases of missing children in our country. Migration and girl child missing has engrossed the state heavily. According to media reports, Odisha records a high of nearly 40 per cent rise in missing cases of girl child in 2015 and more than three girls went missing every day last year. If we take the last year’s data of Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG), it reveals that that 8,246 girls, all below the age of 18, had been missing from the state during that five-year period. Among the 11,552 missing children in the state, 8,246 were girls, which constituted nearly 71 per cent of the total missing children. The number of boys who had gone missing was 3,306. The CAG further points that the missing number of girls has outnumbered boys every year. The CAG findings are more worrying, because the number of missing girls are increasing manifold every passing year. In 2009, 910 girls had gone missing, but it went up to 2,006 in 2013. The CAG also stated that mortality rates for the girl children less than five years of age stood at 74, which exceeded the male child rate of 70 per 1,000 live births. Odisha has a Standard Operating Procedures for Child Welfare Committees unlike many other states to deal with the cases of missing children. The Odisha police has also launched “Operation Smile” in January 2015 in line with the national level initiative to trace all the missing children.
The report of Odisha Police Crime Branch that runs the programme says that altogether 515 missing children were rescued and have been handed over either to their parents or rehabilitated in child care institutions during Operation Smile-II. A child tracking system has also been developed to track, identify and rescue children where a daily basis update on missing and rescued children cases are reported. However, A a comprehensive plan for rehabilitation of rescued children who need rehabilitation, training and capacity building to line department officials as well as awareness generation programme will be crucial to curb the issue. Widening inequality has momentous inferences for macroeconomic stability. Therefore Solutions will have to be as multifaceted and invasive as the causes.
Gender based inequalities are not in-born but are created by us so can we end it. After all, equality is never a threat but an opportunity.
http://orissadiary.com/ShowOriyaColumn.asp?id=71098
We often cheer our breathe at the anecdotes of matrilineal societies that exists in Kerala, Karnataka and Meghalaya in our country where women reportedly enjoy high status and respect in our society, but this itself cannot take away the issues that our daughters face every minute. In India, our rigid patriarchal norms and obsessed preference of Son over daughters have led to an impact that relegates women to secondary status within the household and workplace.
With a population of 225 million, Girls account for 48 per cent of India’s children. However, they face discrimination from the womb. Despite a significant need of structural changes in our policy and implementation modalities, we miss the bus to give our girls an equitable space in the society.
“The Power of Parity: Advancing Women’s Equality in India”, a McKinsey Global Institute report shows poor level of gender parity in Indian society. India’s Gender Parity Score (GPS) is 0.48 where the ideal score should be 1. India ranks 130 of 155 countries on Gender Inequality Index (GII) and have fared only well from Afghanistan among South Asian countries as per the Human Development Report 2015 released by United Nations Development Programme. It can be noted that GII measures the human development costs of gender inequality. A higher GII value 0.563 in the case of India indicates a greater disparity between men and women.
The statistical data has an inevitable connection with ‘Where do our girls miss’. We all witness a broadening gender inequality that starts right from our home. Our socio-cultural norms and economic dependence pattern is in the myth that a son can only take care of their parents in old age but a daughter cant as she certainly will move to her in laws. Similarly, the income of a son would be spent in his own family whereas the income of a daughter; after marriage, would be spent for her in-laws family. This has led the chances of survival of a girl child very less.
Especially, the wealthy and educated ones who have access to ultrasound scans and can afford the price go for sex-selective abortion even though gender-based abortions have been illegal since 1994 in our India with the Pre-conception and Prenatal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act. In another shocking report of ‘Lancet’, a British Medical Journal states that 12 million Indian Girls were aborted in India since 1981. As a fall out, this must have contributed to the Child Sex Ratio to 918 for India in 2011 from 930 in 1981, according to the census data.
The World Bank also in its report reveals that half a million girls go missing at birth each year in India. Even our Women and Child Development Minister Ms. Maneka Gandhi has also confessed that 2000 girls in our country die every day in the womb. Some are born and have pillow on their faces choking them, a statement from the minister itself leaves us to gauge te future threat to our nation even we have the much elated flagship schemes like Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao in our country. It is still not enough.
The National Crime Records Bureau has stated that over the past nine years, 64,000 girls have reportedly been kidnapped. Only from 2005 to 2012, the number of girl’s kidnappings soared 23.2% each year. Minor girls account for almost 85% of all kidnappings in the country.
Undoubtedly, to combat this issue, we have a National level Child Tracking system and Operation Smile Programme that step up the effort to identify, prepare database and rescue the missing children but it needs a thorough rolled out. In terms of legal framework, India still lack a specific law that should focus on missing children and the issue is being dealt with under the category of crime committed against children laid out in IPC and the special and local laws like Immoral Trafficking Prevention Act 1956, Child Labour Prohibition and Regulation Act and Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act 2012 . The Nithari Case in 2007 was a prototype of how the law enforcement agencies treat the missing persons as regular cases and even fail to recognize a set pattern emerging out of the cases.
In this response, Hon’ble Supreme Court while hearing a Writ Petition (Civil) no. 75 of 2012, on 10th May 2013, Bachpan Bachao Andolan vs Union of India has directed to lodge FIR of all the missing children and maintain a Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) to deal with the cases of missing children in our country. Migration and girl child missing has engrossed the state heavily. According to media reports, Odisha records a high of nearly 40 per cent rise in missing cases of girl child in 2015 and more than three girls went missing every day last year. If we take the last year’s data of Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG), it reveals that that 8,246 girls, all below the age of 18, had been missing from the state during that five-year period. Among the 11,552 missing children in the state, 8,246 were girls, which constituted nearly 71 per cent of the total missing children. The number of boys who had gone missing was 3,306. The CAG further points that the missing number of girls has outnumbered boys every year. The CAG findings are more worrying, because the number of missing girls are increasing manifold every passing year. In 2009, 910 girls had gone missing, but it went up to 2,006 in 2013. The CAG also stated that mortality rates for the girl children less than five years of age stood at 74, which exceeded the male child rate of 70 per 1,000 live births. Odisha has a Standard Operating Procedures for Child Welfare Committees unlike many other states to deal with the cases of missing children. The Odisha police has also launched “Operation Smile” in January 2015 in line with the national level initiative to trace all the missing children.
The report of Odisha Police Crime Branch that runs the programme says that altogether 515 missing children were rescued and have been handed over either to their parents or rehabilitated in child care institutions during Operation Smile-II. A child tracking system has also been developed to track, identify and rescue children where a daily basis update on missing and rescued children cases are reported. However, A a comprehensive plan for rehabilitation of rescued children who need rehabilitation, training and capacity building to line department officials as well as awareness generation programme will be crucial to curb the issue. Widening inequality has momentous inferences for macroeconomic stability. Therefore Solutions will have to be as multifaceted and invasive as the causes.
Gender based inequalities are not in-born but are created by us so can we end it. After all, equality is never a threat but an opportunity.
http://orissadiary.com/ShowOriyaColumn.asp?id=71098
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