- Source: Baby Survives Being Buried Alive , British Broadcasting Corporation, Correspondent or Reporter, Jul 07, 2007)
This news report is a blaring revelation of the plight of girl child in India. Thanks to the extremely orthodox and traditional mindset of Indians – be it urban and rural, lakhs of girls die in India before they are born. It is pertaining to a feudal concept that male members or sons are the providers of the family and girls are incapable of taking up that responsibility. Now this concept itself is ironical and portrays the sort of mental divide and social dichotomy in Indian society, when on one hand, people are willing to do anything to woo goddess Saraswati and lakshmi and the likes and stay awake the whole night for Vaishno Devis and all.
The same people however, in most cases are either are allergic to girl child and abort the baby before it is born or they mistreat their daughters. The result of this horrendous and appalling truth of female foeticide, the female to male ratio is woefully dipping and at a pace which is close to Michael Schumacher in his Ferrari.
Women are increasingly entering what were male professional ‘bastions’ but sadly, statistics say otherwise. By the time the 2011 census is done, India would have lost a whopping 10 lakh girls an year. Did anyone say that out President is a woman? Further, we are calling ourselves a developing country with an enviable GDP (forget about the survival =32 Rs a day equation) and so called enlightenment and all that jazz.
Lot of awareness campaigns right from the grass root level to the top have to be carried on to educate people and open their minds and to stop killing female foetuses. A small but significant step in this direction to give a boost to this cause was recently taken b DSK Foundation in Pune.
A public rally was organised on the occasion of Gandhi Jayanti and Navratri sby DSK Foundation to make people realize importance of a girl child and stop female infanticide. The rally was conducted from Good luck Chowk, Deccan to Bal Gandharva and was attended by Bhargavee Chirmule, a well known Marathi actor and office bearers from DSK - Tanvee Kulkarni, (Director, DSK Supinfocomm), Shirish Kulkarni, (ExecutiveDirector, DSK Toyota), Manoj Adkar and Shyam Bhurke from DSK Foundation.
The rally got a good response from the people and we hope that this wont be the last one and there will be many more to come, not just from DSKDL, but from others too. The fairer sex surely can do with many more of such awareness jigs to get all fair and square (metaphorically and statistically!) with the men!
Visit: http://www.dskdl.com/site/stop_female_foeticide
