Govt sponsored project reduces female infanticide in villages

Govt sponsored project reduces female infanticide in villages
NIRMALA GEORGE

NEW DELHI, MARCH 15: In Haryana, six years after the `Apni beti, apna dhan' programme was launched, rural folks are slowly beginning to name their daughters after inspirational women and goddesses.

An incremental improvement from the days when daughters were named Bateri (enough) or Mooli (radish) or Sukhni (dried up) or Kaani (one-eyed), names which reflect the low value attached to the girl child in a patriarchal society.

But the Haryana Government's "Apni beti, apna dhan" scheme introduced a new element into the lives of hapless women who gave birth to female child. The mother was given Rs 500 at the birth of the girl child and an Indira Vikas Patra worth Rs 2,500 was invested in the name of the infant to be given to the girl at the age of marriage.

Just two monetary incentives, given to rural women to ensure that they did not abort the fetus if its sex was known to be that of a female child and to ensure the child's health through childhood and adolescence, have begun to erode the deep-rooted social attitudes that consider girls an economic and social burden.

The Haryana scheme is just one of a host of programmes launched by state governments and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) across the country to address the educational, health and life skills development of adolescent girls which has yielded positive results.

In Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, Mahila Samakhya, a government-sponsored programme is addressing the constraints that prevent women and girls from gaining access to education and in the process creating a pool of aware and articulate women leaders who are spearheading social change in villages.

In Bihar, the programme for education and livelihood for adolescent girls is led by Adithi, an NGO which is building awareness through non-formal education and income generation schemes.

Given the paucity of information on strategies to change social attitudes and perceptions about adolescent girls, the international non-profit research institution, Population Council, on Tuesday brought together a number of NGOs and government agencies to identify and document strategies for the future.

"The country is faced with the largest ever generation of adolescents, and yet different states are grappling with questions about what works and what does not," said Saroj Pachauri of the Population Council.

The experiences and strategies employed by different agents of change, whether NGOs or government agencies, which have proved successful would help policy planners, service providers and administrative officers to learn lessons which can be applied elsewhere in the country and today's effort was to bring together different sectors.

However, some participants cautioned that a strategy that worked in one State may not yield the same results in another.

Feroza Mehrotra, who spearheaded the Haryana initiative said, there had been criticism that the money invested in the girl child's name was being viewed as government-sponsored dowry. "Despite this criticism, we still feel we have succeeded since there has been a tangible change in how girls are perceived," Mehrotra said.

Despite the successes of the past few decades, the overall picture is far from rosy. The easy availability of sex determination tests even though these have been banned by the Government, has meant that a large number of girl children are eliminated even before birth. This is reflected in the shocking gap in the sex ratio, which, in certain districts of Haryana, was as wide as 865 females per thousand males.

Though the results following the Apni beti, apna dhan programme, were the most spectacular, such initiatives in other states too had resulted in varying degrees of success.

For example, the Adithi initiative in Bihar has resulted in more children, especially girls in middle and high schools, decrease in incidence of female infanticide, more marriages without dowry and a decrease in violence against girls.