Female infanticide in India

There's been a fair amount of discussion of China's missing girls, and of what the future may hold for a society that puts family foremost, but now lacks enough mates for its young men.
The situation in India, however, isn't much different, and the crisis may in fact be even further along, as the Times of London reports:

Social scientists say that India is missing 40 million girls, aborted en masse over the years by parents, rich and poor, who saw them as a liability, while boys are cherished for continuing the family line and providing economic security. All over India, since the 1980s when the country was flooded with cheap ultrasound technology, this mobile killing machine, wielded by doctors with no ethics, has been doing its lethal work. Villages may not have clean drinking water or electricity, but they have access to ultrasound tests. Some clinics in towns load the machine on to a van, along with a generator, and go to remote towns offering sex-selection services. In some villages no girl has been born for years.

The Indian Medical Association estimates that five million female foetuses are aborted each year. As a result, the sex ratio in the 0 to 6 age group in some northern areas (where the craze for boys is at its worst) is amazingly skewed: 793 females for every 1,000 boys. In some areas it is 754, and in parts of Punjab and Haryana, the figure is about 600.

These figures are truly shocking -- far worse than anything I've seen in even the most alarmist discussions of the situation in China.

The results are proving to be devastating. In Haryana a whole generation of young men is failing to find wives because a quarter of the female population has simply disappeared. In Punjab men who want to marry and raise families are growing desperate. . .

Ad hoc solutions to the bride famine are emerging. Women are allegedly being shared. Women’s groups are reporting cases of fraternal polyandry. Brothers are sharing the same woman, but keeping it discreet. “The young woman is formally married to only one brother. Neither she nor her parents have any idea of their real intentions. Later, her husband’s brothers also have sex with her,” says Ravinder Bhalla, a sociologist.

These ménages can go badly wrong. Police in Uttar Pradesh say five cases of fratricide have been registered in the past year: murders provoked by sexual jealousy or rivalry. They also raise emotional and social issues. When children are born, who is “Daddy” and who is “Uncle”? Paternity, as it turns out, is rarely a big issue: since the brothers don’t marry different wives, they don’t go their separate ways — and thus don’t demand a division of the family land or property. In rural communities, where most families own only small plots, this is deemed a great blessing because it often means the difference between survival and ruination.

More on Indian foeticide here.

Posted by David on June 22, 2004 8:01 PM