I was doing some background research for an article, and came up with the following snippet from First Report on Religion Data (collected during the 2001 Census):
Of India 's total population, seven years old and above, 64.8% are literate... Christians, at 80.3%, and Buddhists, at 72.7%, follow the Jains in literacy rates. The lowest literacy rates are among people of 'other religions and persuasions', at 47%.
States such as Punjab , Haryana and Gujarat depict a distinct bias against the girl-child regardless of religious affiliation.
Similarly, religion seems to have little effect on attitudes towards women. Christians down south have a better sex ratio - so do Hindus and Muslims. But the Christians in Punjab have a shamefully low child sex ratio ratio of 870 girls /1,000 boys .
Surprisingly, this 'other persuations' category of people, i.e. those who don't want to report their religion, records the highest child sex ratio of 976/1,000 across the country....
Hmmm.
Interesting, no?
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And, on a related note, found this through a CJP press note -
The Citizens for Justice and Peace and Women’s Centre, Mumbai have in a joint intervention application sought to become party respondents to a petition filed in the Bombay High Court challenging the constitutionality of the Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques (Regulation and Prevention of Misuse) Amendment Act, 2002 (14 of 2003) along with The Pre-conception and Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sec Selection) Rules, 1996.
The petition filed by one Shri Vinod Soni and his wife in early 2005, is on the grounds that as father of boys they have the fundamental right to a balanced family and therefore choose to select and conceive a female baby.
Recent media reports however have shown that the petitioner couple have admitted to not having much knowledge of the petition but had actually been asked to become petitioners by medical practioneers interested in the continuance of practices that result in the select elimination of girl babies.
Oh fie! Aren't you ashamed of yourselves, Mr and Mrs Soni!?
Until recently I was of the belief the female infanticide was a practice amongst the socially and economically backward classes. Numerous articles and several statistics later I realized how far from the truth my belief was. Selective breeding is as much a urban phenomenon as it is rural.
ReplyDeleteI guess as individuals most of us are nice folks but as groups we can get incredibly stupid. Just the thought of selection of the sex of the baby is so wrong. How different is this from things like ethnic clensing or the holucast?
ReplyDeleteWhile I agree on abortion rights, sex selection can only preceed stuff like selection of a child based on physical conditions like health etc (not to think of genetical modifications that might follow too)
Linked to you, A:)
ReplyDeleteSumanth,
ReplyDeletewhatever!
Pawan