In India, the arrival of a girl child is not always the
welcoming news. Certain families go to the
extent of equating the occasion to a funeral.
Some families refuse to let anyone know that a girl child is born, and
they try to hide the news. Those others who
get to know the news may even convey a message of condolences. When my wife delivered the second girl
child, the nurses around her expressed their deepest sympathies as if it was a
natural thing to do.
Though it is illegal in India to determine the sex of
unborn child, many clinics in India provide these services to the eager
parents. And if it turns out that it is
a girl, some families go for an abortion.
Some Indian clinics are notorious for carrying out such operations or a
large scale. Occasionally, a bag full of
girl fetuses found in the backyard of such clinics makes it to the newspapers
and TV channels. There are certain
states in India where the female-to-male ratio is so bad that it has started to
turn into a sociological disaster – creating villages where men don’t find
brides.
