INDIA:Ten million female foetuses have been aborted in the country in 20 years, writes Randeep Ramesh
THE INDIAN government yesterday announced a scheme to pay poor families to give birth to and bring up girl children, in a bid to stop the trend of parents aborting female foetuses at the rate of half a million a year.
Families in seven states are set to benefit from a series of cash payments amounting to 15,500 rupees (€252) to poor families to keep their girl children.
Ministers say more than 100,000 girls will be saved in the first year.
In India ultrasound technology, coupled with a traditional preference for boys, who are seen as future breadwinners, has led to mass female foeticide.
According to a study in the British medical journal the Lancet, 10 million female foetuses may have been aborted in India over the past 20 years after illegal sex determination tests.
The government has been alarmed by the country's dropping sex ratio and hopes the promise of money will change people's behaviour.
As an extra incentive any girl who reaches 18 will get a further 100,000 rupees (€1,567) provided she has completed her school education and is not married.
"We will pay the money in stages and monitor how they are brought up," the women and child development minister, Renuka Chowdhury, told a news conference. "We think this will force the families to look upon the girl as an asset rather than a liability and will certainly help us save the girl child."
The tragedy of being conceived female in India has been well documented. The sex ratio in India was 945 female to 1,000 male babies in 1991. This declined to 927 in 2001. The scheme will begin in areas with the worst ratios.
However, some experts have questioned whether the cash incentive will have any effect. Wealthier cities, with a high proportion of better educated people, have the worst ratios.
"It is the urban middle classes who can also afford the ultrasound tests to determine the sex of the foetus," said Sabu George, a campaigner against female foeticide.
"That is really the problem. The poor are copying the behaviour of the richer people in India.
"What we have not seen stop is that technology is more and more available and that every small town now has a doctor who illegally will test your baby's sex and abort it for a fee."
George said there was a "conspiracy of silence" by the medical profession over female foeticide. In the 12 years since selective abortion was outlawed only one doctor has been convicted.
The social implications of India's "missing girls" have worried many researchers. Some point to surveys which show brides are being trafficked across India.
Other social scientists have predicted a crime explosion as unmarried young men unable to find a mate turn to violence.