- Published: September 9, 2022
- Updated: September 9, 2022
- University / College: Monash University
- Language: English
- Downloads: 16
Nearly half of India’s children are girls. However, the girl child is considered a lesser child in our society. Irrespective of class, caste and economic conditions, she is discriminated against and neglected at all the levels. This result in the denial of basic services required for her survival, welfare and development. The girl child is perceived as a burden to be passed on to another family. Her contribution in the household economy is not acknowledged. Various factors contribute towards the increase of offences/crime against women, including dowry deaths, rape, and eve-teasing, etc.
The girl child has to be brought up with utmost care and regard by instilling in her the sense of pride and responsibility of nurturing the future generation. Faster development can only be possible by the human resources development. Therefore, our ultimate aim should be improving the lot of the girl child. I sincerely believe that those who do not respect the girl child actually do not respect their own mother and their own sister. I deeply wish that girl child in India be treated equally with the male child. Educate the girl child. She is special, she will be a mother, and she will be a wife like your mother or your wife or your sister appeals to you not to discriminate against the girl child in our country, let us make a promise to educate the girl child, save them from discrimination!
Bhagalpur: India has the worst record in South Asia when it comes to the sex ratio. Its 914 girls for every 1000 boys under the age of six. But in one village in Bihar, it’s a privilege to be a girl.
Being a girl child is a privilege in Dhahra village of Bhagalpur, Bihar. For every girl born, villagers plant 10 mango trees. The result, this is the greenest stretch in Bhagalpur, with over 20, 000 mango trees in and around the village. The male: female sex ratio is also the best in the region.
Villager of Dhahra Nirmala Devi says, “ There are two benefits of planting trees. One, we sell the fruits of the tree to make money for the girl’s marriage and secondly it help environment.” _” Little Girls are Heavens Flowers”
“ Daughters are flowers that are forever in bloom.”
“ Girls are giggles with freckles all over them”
__“ Save Girl Child
Else Ur Son Will Be Forced To Be G A Y”
_____({ Essay on Baby Girl.
These days gender imbalance is becoming a grave problem especially in India. Girls are either aborted from mother’s womb or killed after birth. This gives rise to crimes like rape and killing. In ancient time birth of a girl child was considered as auspicious. As per an Indian proverb, “ A home without a daughter is like a body without soul”. The birth of a daughter in the house was compared with the advent of Goddess Laxmi, the Goddess of wealth and Goddess Saraswati, the Goddess of Knowledge and Wisdom. No ceremony was considered to be complete in absence of women. The belief was that “ No home is complete without a woman.” Indian is a “ Male Dominated Society” hence women are the receiving end. They are always will treated and ill-treated at every step. As a matter of fact, a girl child is under constant, vigil initially by the parents, then her husband and finally her own children. She is never allowed to dwell and survive freely. Worst of all she is often killed before being born while in mother’s womb itself.
This is foetus killing or infanticide. This is the gross downfall of humanity, morality and the values. The situation has drastically worsened these days. Women suffer badly, infanticide have become widespread. Parents don’t send daughters for schooling thinking that the daughter is going to be a kitchen confined housewife. There was, hence, decline in female literacy and her position in the society. This practice is lasting till today and the killing of foetus after the sex determination is fearlessly continued. The crime of female foetus aborting is widespread not only in rural areas but in urban areas too. With the help of new techniques it has become possible to determine the sex of the unborn baby or the foetus, and if it is found to be a girl child than, this is followed by abortion. Clinics offering such service have come up all over the country. For the doctors with sex identification equipments the said illegal business is booming beyond imagination. Although there are severing laws against the misuse of parental diagnostic techniques, those are meant only for detecting abnormalities in the unborn infant and associated risks to the pregnant mother if any.
The doctors, however, violate this law. Not a single case has been field so far under the law, which forbids such an unethical practice. Dowry is another big evil in some northern states of India. Father of the girl has to give lot of cash and gold to the bridegroom. This may be given either during the wedding or after the marriage ceremony. In case the father of the bride fails to spare the said valuables on account of his poor economic health, the bride (the daughter) is severely tortured or she may even be torched to death. Today, the said problem is quite widespread in the northern states of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan. Upon attaining puberty, a girl is considered to be a security risk, a likely source of trouble for the family’s honour and reputation. Then there are economic reasons for her killing. She is a liability for her parents from the cradle ceremony to the marriage. There has been not let up in the dowry system, which breaks the back of the parents. She is got rid of in order to save the family properly from partition.
In some communities there is a dirty superstition that is a daughter is killed, the next child will be a son. In China also, the eldest male child inherits the property look upon the male child as their protector and supporter in old age. This gender-bias leads to the killing of girl child. At least, I cannot imagine my existence in this world had there been no girl. I would not have come to this beautiful world and enjoyed my life had there been no girl. I am born because of a woman. I am married to a woman. The woman is my mother, my sister and my wife. The human society is like a cart. The God has created man and woman as the two wheels of this society cart. Those two wheels are made for each other. For the human race to exist and survive, both of the wheels must be functional else the society collapses.
In nutshell all must be kind to women with high degree of love and respect to them. There is no life without a wife and there can’t be a wife in absence of girl. Considering all the facts above, save the girl child in the interest of humanity. Saving baby girls shall minimise crime and build a powerful nation. At least in India, the girl child has been a topic of discussions and debates for the past several decades but, even today, the position appears to remain unchanged. The girl was always an unwanted child, and was found killed at birth. With the advancement of Science and Technology this killing has only gone still further – for now the girl child is being killed even before birth.
The present scenario in which the girl child is mercilessly killed even before birth, does not speak too well about the fate of this species. The scenario is so varied that, it is really difficult to understand what we are really doing or trying to do in this regard.
On the one hand we see girls entering in the fields of all kinds of professions holding senior positions in offices, becoming engineers, doctors, managers etc. We are obviously impressed and are likely to believe that, the position of the girl is now after all not too bad.
However, the complexity of the problem becomes malicious when we see that, together with girls entering professions there is a simultaneous and continuous rise in the graph of crimes against women. Why and how do these two sides of the same problem co-relate, is a mind-boggling situation.
This situation is true of the urban area where education and freedom is given to girls – to a great extent, but even this growth of this class does not really bear any testimony to the equality of girls with boys.
The rural areas consisting of the major chunk of the Indian population see no – yes absolutely no change in the general attitude towards girls. In the villages, girls are not sent to schools and, if at all they are, they drop out after an year or two of schooling.
Here, the myth still remains that, education is useless for girls – they have to concentrate on house work, child bearing and child bringing up all through life – and all this, it is believed needs no education. The village people are hard to convince that education of women is as important if not more important than the education of men.
In the village, the girl child has no say in anything in the home, not even things of her own concern – she is, even to-day in the 21st Century treated as an object to be used instead of an individual human being with all the ingredients of human beings – like her counterparts – the boy.
She, even today remains to have the status of an object to be used or dispensed with at the whims and fancies of her male family members. With this psyche of the average Indian adult, I personally see no light at the end of the dark tunnel.
In my view, even for the urban areas, the prospects of the girl child are not too bright as, even while women are acquiring status and positions in the office – firstly, they do not get the respect the male counterparts get in the offices.
Besides no matter what status a woman may achieve outside home, inside the home she, by and large remains a chattel. When this is the ground reality of the girl at home and outside home it appears that, even education and financial independence have not helped women really enhancing their status vis-^-vis the status of men.
Let us analyze as to why this peculiar situation persists and how we should deal with it. My personal view is that the rise of women and the crime against women going hand in hand is a paradox but not difficult to understand.
It is very clear that, the men who have held the fort single handedly for centuries, would obviously not like to give up their importance, or even share it with women. It is they who resent this rise of the heads of women and so, before women rise to unchallengeable heights the ogre of man wants to crush them.
This he does by using his God gifted physical strength and it is this reason that, crimes against women are now on the rise. The woman who was earlier battered because she was considered a lesser being is now being battered, because she is potential challenge to man’s unquestioned supremacy through past several centuries.
Thus, the position remains unchanged even after education and financial independence.
To my mind, there is no single package that could improve matters for the girl child/woman except that men change their attitude towards women. Unless men start regarding women as their equal partners, in the growth of humanity this differentiation between men and women shall continue unabated.
No single item of achievement like education, profession, legal rights or even the mixture of all these will work out a solution – the only feasible solution is the change of mind, the change of attitude of the men towards women. Till this is done, no amount of teaching, preaching or bargaining will help the girl child.
At this juncture when we talk of attitude, I must add that even women have to change their attitude towards the girl child/ women. At least partly women are themselves responsible for their position.
As women it is they who pamper their sons and husbands till they begin to believe that they are really superior beings. Let us all, men and women change our attitudes in this regard and, I am sure it will reap pleasant results.