On the eve of International Women’s day 2017, when the world awaited to take another oath to empower the women. In the Bharti Hospital of Mhaisal village , Sanghli distt. of Maharashtra, a 26 year old woman Swati Jamdade succumbed to life while few extreme humans tried to let her go of her unborn female foetus.“We gave everything to the boy as demanded by him before the marriage including 150 gms gold and rs. 3 lakhs cash along with the so called ‘basic amenities’ of fridge, sofa , double bed , utensils etc” , quoted the helpless father of the deceased , who at the least expected was a happy life for her daughter. Praveen Jamdade , the man behind the story who is a person like any other middle class of our country with an incredible need of a boy . Being the ‘man’ of the family , it was be yond his limits to endure a third girl child in his family when the second girl was enough to make him cry inconsolably for hours and stroll the hospital corridor with anger in june 2015.It took several elders to pacify him by saying he could get lucky the third time and have a son. As for me , No written law has ever been more blindly followed than unwritten customs supported by popular opinions and so Praveen forced Swati to go under a sex determination and when it turned out to be a girl again , he forced her to go under an abortion , which cost her life .Now, The question of the hour is Can we really empower women , because as far as empowerment is considered , we need healthy and most importantly ‘surviving females’ for it. How else do we empower then, dead? This leaves me in state of utter contemplation towards the government of India. The role of the policy makers does not end with it . They need to come to ground zero to have an encounter with the true face of the society where ethics are a far sight. People who would object me on this by giving evidence of the hard works of our ministers , I would remind them of a ‘little’ problem that arose ,the 19 girls that were found in the premises, left to decompose could not dial 1090 or the child helpline number. Neither the national commission for women or the police control room could reach them till swati martyrd her life to draw our attention to a gigantic yet a common problem In our society .
Having a look on the recent data , decennial records have shown lowering of more than 50 pts in the sex ratios of major states of the country. Western Rajasthan leading with 883 per 1000 boys. But why do we have to compare the no of girls to that of boys? Are they a metric system to calculate the number of girls? The indian economic mindset answers this, where boys are considered an ‘asset’ while the girls are a ‘liability’. Being a women would not be a terribly difficult task if it would not consist principally of dealing with men. But there is a good news for some , the amount of girls in some northern states have got critically low where eligible boys have now to travel more than 4000 kms across to find themselves a bride ironically to produce a yet another boy . I pity that boy who would then have to travel 4000*10 kms to fetch a bride and the chain will go on. This vicious circle of female foeticide will eventually lead to an exponential increase in cases of abuse of women and girl children , trafficking , increasing the no. of child marriages , polyandry etc. The Preconception and Prenatal Diagnosic Technique Act , 1994 was modified in 2003 to educate the medical pracitioners , not to indulge their resources and intellect in such heinous crimes but the act ended with a few cases depositing a fine of rs. 300. The life of a girl costs Rs. 300!!
These skewed societal reports are greatly upsetting for the largest democracy of the world that claims of human rights and a predetermined list of “fundamental rights” . But to the people , We girls don’t need the right to property . Provide us with our RIGHT TO LIVE and it will suffice! -MEDHAVI PANDEY.