Ladybug's field notes

As I traveled in South-Western Rajasthan, village after village I met communities in denial. There was either silence or they tried hard to convince me that the phenomenon of sex selection does not take place in their villages. Period! If you push, show data, ask them to ponder and after a long pause it was a tentative, "May be...some women in some other villages are doing it" and then quickly turning to, "It is the urban areas you see..not us". It was tiring to talk to these walls of silence! We met them in different social groups. They were Local Government members (PRI) as we know them in India) or the health workers like, Auxiliary Nursing Matrons (ANMs) and Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA). Health, Nutrition and Sanitation Committee members and local doctors and others. "Although you say nothing is wrong, the data says otherwise" chipped in a NGO worker. "May be that's what God is doing. He is sending less girls to the world...

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 ...

Mehroon was married and sent to her marital home only to find that her husband already had another wife. She was beaten up by her husband for not performing her wifely duties and the other wife did not spare her either. She ran back to her grandmother’s home where she grew up without parents to save her life. She now considers herself a separated woman and this “woman” is all of 15! This is not a story of North Bihar, neither a story from the hinterland of Rajasthan, it is only about 20 km away from Kolkata, the state capital of West Bengal. I know we would love to find the religion in it. After all it is always the “other” who has all the problems and not us! But, Malati’s suicide in a similar situation a few days ago would not let us do so. May be now we will try to find the caste in it, after all it has to be the other!! Mehroon, Susmita, Tapasi and Mahroof …I met them all in the adolescent centers run by an organization in South 24 Paraganas. Their stories give a new meaning...