Ladybug's field notes

Memories of two incidents are bugging my mind today. I will be short though not so sweet here! Thakur Ranh Singh walked across the main village lane. He was silent but his walking stick filled up the silent streets and conveyed the necessary message. No one turned up in the meeting that was planned long ago. We were in a village in Jaisalmer to hold a meeting against sex selective abortion and female infanticide. Ranh Singh is a member of the Village Health and Sanitation Committee. Technically he should have been the one organising the meeting with us. But that was not to be. His granddaughter had died within days of being born . The villagers' eyes changed colors when one enquired about the reason. One could hardly keep the news hushed...the baby was killed with a high dose of opium in the very home that she wanted to call her own. Asking for a home for a women in India? A sacrilege indeed! We organised a training for women of Uttar Pradesh on health. Participants were ...

The Census data is out and a development sector colleague heaved a sigh of relief looking at the Child Sex Ratio (CSR), “It s not as bad as I thought it would be.” This is when the Child Sex Ratio has plummeted to 914, the lowest ever in the history of Census in India, none of the northern states except Himachal has a CSR above 900 and almost all the states in India has recorded a drop a CSR. How much worse were we expecting it to be? Ms. Sonia Gandhi the declares in no unclear terms “In my own country, most worrying of all is the declining sex ratio of females to males”. Declining sex ratio has no doubt taken the centre stage of discussion and with marginal increase in the Sex Ratio, I am watching with complete disgust how we are losing sight of the bigger picture. Are we so shortsighted to realise that this low CSR will soon reflect in sex ratio sooner than later? Sex selection takes place not because one has anything against a child but it takes place because a female ...