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INVESTIGATION: SEX SELECTION
It Doesn't Come Cheap Interlude
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RELIGIOUS INTERVENTION
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Holy Orders
It's good news and bad news rolled in one. Alarmed at falling
female numbers, anxious activists are now roping in religious leaders
to take up the cause of the girl child. The most significant development
came this April when an edict from the Akal Takht called for the
excommunication of any Sikh indulging in female foeticide. And the
Indian Medical Association, Unicef and the National Commission for
Women recently called a meeting of leaders of all faiths in Delhi
to condemn the practice.
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ACT OF FAITH: Religious leaders at the Delhi meet
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But where religion goes, controversy rarely stays away. At one
point, the conference was reduced to an anti-abortion tirade. One
speaker blamed the present crisis on decades of eating eggs. Sparks
flew when Union HRD Minister Murli Manohar Joshi, also present,
called for a re-interpretation of the scriptures. "We need
to remove everything outdated from our religious texts. For instance,
if any scripture denies women an equal share of property, it should
be changed," he later told India Today. Then Swami Agnivesh
of the Arya Samaj spoke about encouraging widow re-marriage. "There
is nothing wrong with our scriptures," snapped Swami Shri Ramanandji
Maharaj of Delhi in his speech, adding, "A widow who remarries
will go to hell. Why should she worry about ill-treatment by society?
She could commit Sati." The speech ended when the Shankaracharya
of Kanchi chided him on stage.
Earlier, the All India Democratic Women's Association circulated
a letter criticising the choice of some of the speakers present.
A.R. Nanda, secretary, Department of Family Welfare, reacts cautiously:
"What matters is that these leaders issued a statement against
female foeticide. The rest are their individual observations."
Meanwhile, the Voluntary Health Association of Punjab is planning
district-level meetings in the state to assess whether the Akal
Takht edict has had an effect.
—Anna M.M. Vetticad
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Another clinic,
another bizarre conversation. A 10-minute drive away from Deep, at Sofat
Diagnostic Centre in Ludhiana, Dr Sumeet Sofat keeps his brusque queries
to the bare minimum: how many children do you have, how many abortions
so far? "All right, you'll need to do XY separation," he says.
Charges, he reveals when pressed, could be Rs 10,000-25,000, but he can't
say for sure. A girl at the reception had earlier admitted that it could
even go up to Rs 60,000.
Dr Iqbal Singh Ahuja of Ludhiana does not even
put up a pretence. Speaking to india today, this tubby doctor with an
endless supply of wisecracks, admits that he practises Ericsson's method
of XY separation, "but only on humanitarian grounds". It's a
different matter altogether that his idea of "humanitarian grounds"
includes "a couple who have had two girls already." He adds:
"Aise logon ka dard mujhse sahan nahin jata (I can't bear to see
their pain)." Opposing a ban on the technique, Ahuja suggests instead
that select professionals should be allowed to practise it under the constant
watch of a regulatory authority.
Incidentally, US-based scientist Ronald J. Ericsson,
who pioneered an XY separation technique available in India, is furious
at the Government's move to ban it. "Pre-selection of sex will dramatically
lower the abortion rate of female foetuses," he argues. Pre-conception
sex selection may be just one of numerous factors leading to a skewed
sex ratio, but it is in essence the manipulation of nature with dangerous
consequences, particularly in a country like India.
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"The Central Government
made a law and just put it on their bookshelves."
Indira Jaising, Lawyer
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"We would
have acted if any NGO had made a specific complaint."
M. Datta Ghosh, Dept of Family Welfare
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Forget for a moment the practice of pre-conception
sex selection. The Government has even failed to check female infanticide
and foeticide. The PNDT Act, which came into force in 1996, was originally
targeted at abortions of female foetuses following sex-determination tests.
But, says Chandigarh lawyer Veena Sharma, "After it came into force,
not a single case has been filed in Punjab, Haryana or Chandigarh against
clinics performing these tests, though we all know it's happening everywhere.
It's almost a fashion here with people scoffing at others saying, 'Aapne
test nahi kiya (you haven't done the test)?'"
"It's so open here, we have mobile ultrasound
vans," says Manmohan Sharma of the Voluntary Health Association of
Punjab (VHAP). He estimates the state has 1,500-3,000 clinics with ultrasound
facilities. Registration of such clinics is mandatory. But when the Court
asked states to file affidavits on action taken under the Act, Punjab
was one of 18 with no registered facilities.
Now when the Government is on a registration
drive, there are howls of protest from doctors in the state. "We
object to the Punjab Government's blanket order on registration of all
ultrasound machines after the Supreme Court ruling, which means even doctors
using ultrasound sonography for non-genetic services must get themselves
registered," Dr O.P.S. Kande of the Indian Medical Association in
Punjab tries to rationalise the resistance. But the point is that such
facilities could be abused and registration would help in the monitoring
process.
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