The best way to know the self is feeling oneself at the moments of reckoning. The feeling of being alone, just with your senses, may lead you to think more consciously. More and more of such moments may sensitize ‘you towards you’, towards others. We become regular with introspection and retrospection. We get ‘the’ gradual connect to the higher self we may name Spirituality or God or just a Humane Conscious. We tend to get a rhythm again in life. We need to learn the art of being lonely in crowd while being part of the crowd. A multitude of loneliness in mosaic of relations! One needs to feel it severally, with conscience, before making it a way of life. One needs to live several such lonely moments. One needs to live severallyalone.

Wednesday 11 April 2012

THE GIRL-CHILD AND THE INDIAN BADLANDS

  • UNFP: Annually, More than 6 Lakh girls are not allowed to born in India.
  • UN: Foetal sex identification techniques have resulted in around 120 million less girl-children born in Asia.
  • UNICEF: Since 1991, 80% of districts in India have recorded a declining sex ratio.
Yet another life lost to the cruel hands of male domination psychos. The Bangalore baby Afreen, badly thrashed by her demonic father, breathed last today. Plight of this baby girl coming is already known to the people across India as memories of what happened to Falak are still haunting.

There will be much hue and cry and debate shows on the airwaves but the way things are moving, chances are, it, too, would be a done and shut case on the question of bringing the required change to the gender profiling of the social structural formations.

Because the curative measures are beyond any remedy that any system can offer. It is sociological, deeply entrenched in the psyche with the thousands of years of shameless male domination. And the double whammy is whatever little that is present in the name of the system supporting such curative measures, is too, full of the male chauvinists.

Parliament is the supreme law making body in India, yet, it is the same body that blocks almost of the radical curative measures.

When it has not been able to act for grown-ups, should we expect it to be sincere enough to take note and act for those who cannot even speak?

When it has been not able to implement the women’s reservation after such a long and righteous demand, can we think of the path-breaking legislations like ‘Personhood Act’ being debated for an amendment in the US?

A much debates issue globally, almost of us in India wouldn’t have heard of it.

So the misery continues. Here is yet another case of Gwalior where a man killed his daughter by feeding her nicotine. He was arrested today for killing his daughter just two days after her birth by stuffing her mouth with gutkha. Heinous always, such incidents are now crossing every extreme of brutality. So we have incidents where a father leaves her nine-month old daughter near Korukkupet railway station near Chennai; or an incident of Barabanki last year where a woman jumps in the water stream with her seven daughters after continued harassment from her husband; or the 2010 incident of Ranchi where a husband kills his wife and two daughters to remarry and have a male child; or the mother of Udaipur who kills her third daughter by drowning her in a well; or the numerous cases of abandoned newborn baby girls that we come across almost on a daily basis.

There are pockets in India where birth of a girl is considered a curse. Many Rajasthan and Haryana villages have abysmally low sex ratios. Devda, a Jaisalmer village, is known to the world for having almost no daughters. They are many villages like this. Some estimates say around 2500 cases of female foeticide and infanticide take place daily in Rajasthan.

Just google for the related information and you will find your breathing choked by the scale of disaster.  

The situation is endemic. It’s catastrophic.

Last October, the United Nations released a report saying the foetal sex identification techniques reduced the female population by almost 120 million in Asia including India and China. The report further said it would take another 50 years for the affected countries to come out of its negative effects.

But that is an ideal situation the report hypothesizes where the affected countries would be able to realize the wrong and would embark on the corrective measures ensuring no more aberrations. That is certainly not happening in the India of the day.

According to a report of the Sample Registration Survey (SRS) by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFP), more than 6 Lakh girls are not allowed to born annually in India. According to the Registrar General of India (RGI), India’s child sex ratio came down from 927 in 2001 to 914 in 2011. A UNICEF report says, “Since 1991, 80% of districts in India have recorded a declining sex ratio with the state of Punjab being the worst.”

System has only poorly responded to the malaise. The National Crime Records Bureau figures just count some hundreds of cases of female foeticide and infanticide while every independent report puts the figure running into tens of thousands annually. The Gwalior case mentioned above is an eye-opener. The father had killed the newborn in October 2011 but it took the police almost seven months to put him behind the bars even if his wife had already testified against him.

Apart from a sociological revolution, that is a stable but a long-term solution, some radical measures are needed to put immediate checks and balances.

Can we think of something like ‘Personhood’ act of the US in the Indian scenario that doesn’t infringe on the freedom of a woman to decide whether she has to abort or give birth?

Are we ready to eliminate the mercenaries of the Indian badlands of male domination?

How many more deaths the society would have with every baby Falak and baby Afreen before the light comes?
©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey - http://severallyalone.blogspot.com/