Our site administrator Paul tips us off to an article over at the BBC today that highlights a unique new program launched by the government of India:
The Indian government is planning to set up a network of cradles around the country where parents can leave unwanted baby girls.
The minister for women and child development, Renuka Chowdhury, told BBC News the cradles would be “everywhere”.
It is the latest initiative to try to wipe out the practice of female foeticide and female infanticide. [Link]
In my opinion anything that will help mitigate the foeticide and infanticide scourge is a good thing, but the imagery of little cradles set up around the country is kind of bittersweet.
“We will have cradles strategically placed all over the place so that people who don’t want their babies can leave them there,” Ms Chowdhury told the BBC News website.
The cradles could be in places as diverse as the local tax collector’s office, or where local councils meet.
Ms Chowdhury said parents would be able to leave their babies secretly. The important thing was to save their lives…
“They will be collected and put into homes,” she said. “There are plenty of existing homes and we will be adding some more also…” [Link]
Apparently there is actually a precedent for this type of program (in Japan):
The drop-off at Jikei Hospital in southern Japan will consist of a small window in an outside wall, which opens on to an incubator bed, officials say.
Once a baby has been placed inside, an alarm bell will alert staff. [Link]
Wow.
I don’t know anything about adoption within India – are there really that many families that are looking to adopt these girls? Where will they go if not another family?
Oh, there is a precedent for this within India as well.. in TN, it was called the Thottil Kuzhandhai (cradle baby) plan and I think it was started sometime during the 1991-96 period when Jaya was the CM.
It’s very well meant, but I wonder if it will really change anything. Adoption is already an option for those who don’t want their girl chidren, but among those who can most easily access it, i.e. urban middle class people, the selective abortion rate is the highest, and sex ratios are really skewed, which means they prefer to abort rather than giving up a baby. It may have an effect at the rural level where sex-selection is harder. But even that is sort of like a statist solution to a grassroots problem, rather like using reservations to make up for a glaring lack of investment in education for the poorest. Mightn’t it be better to pay people who have and keep girl children rather than passing them on to awful state orphanages?
Abhi wrote: there is actually a precedent for this type of program
There actually is a precedent for this program. In New Jersey. And about a dozen other states.
Next time, more research please.
Ikram, I think this is fairly unique in that it caters to girl babies only…
well, as the article mentions, they are assuming that most of the babies will be girls but i’m sure they’re not going to be sending any little boys back either.
while there are safe haven programs in many places, i think what makes this program unique is the execution — can you imagine seeing a bunch of cradles along the jersey turnpike?
Yes, it wont do much for the cases where the child is aborted. However, there are also plenty of cases (don’t have stats on this) where either kids are found abandoned or killed right after birth and this measure would definitely help address.
Unfortunately this is true, adoption as an option is not that common and people need to be made aware. State orphanages suck too. I really wish the Govt. along with this plan also launches a big campaign on promoting adoption and how it is good for our country and for the children, especially targeting the new urban yuppies a lot of who are very socially conscious these days.
I have had many discussions with people I know about adoption and while some people are open to it, usually most women have the point of view that they all want at least one child of their own to go through the experience of having a child. The men (and these got on my nerves) talk crap like a child is something very personal and so they would want one who carries their genes. I guess even if people took the middle ground and adopted one and gave birth to one, it wont be such a bad thing. The only caveat being would they be able to treat both the kids equally without showering more affection on either. This could be easier said than done. Of course, guys talking about gene pools, I hope never think adoption for the sake of the child.
Ardy, you know, as a woman who has always wanted to adopt, I find that men are much less into the idea in general than women. It’s always my male relatives who go on about how you have to go through childbirth to really know what it’s like to be a mother (ha!). And male significant others have usually been rather more keen on biological reproduction. In any event, adoption is getting more respectability and visibility in India but most people still wouldn’t do it – the usual concerns about whether the child will have inherited psychological or physical health problems, what if it isn’t too bright, god knows who the parents were, etc etc. People who can’t have children of their own will ask a sibling to have a child for them before they’d adopt, which I think is really sad.
It’s really nice that they’re trying to save lives by doing this, but at the same time I feel that it’s as if they’re saying that people are ALLOWED to not want girls, that it’s normal. Maybe they should set up plans to make it less expensive to raise girls (education grants etc) instead of allowing people to dump their daughters away like this.
I would in fact completely agree with you on that based on the people I have talked to 🙂 I have always found women more open to the idea than men. As for the reasons of experiencing childbirth, I guess my sample space just held that opinion and I am not saying all women say that. I disclaim, my opinions are based on the people I have talked to and the norm may be different (or maybe not)
Yes, and if you will notice, these are the kind of people I have expressed my frustration with. A women saying she wants to experience childbirth, I can understand, but a guy talking about biological childbirth I have a tougher time understanding.
Yes, its more common to adopt within family for the reason you mentioned, sad though it is.
Abhi I’m really glad you talked about the issue of female foeticide and infanticide in this topic. I think most of us by now have seen the numbers of the female/male ratio in India and how it among the worst in the world, especially in northern india.
Sad to say that this is now a problem in some western desi community, especially in Canada. I can calling seeing stories in the New Section on this website about the problem in the South Asian communties in Vancouver[ I know people who did this] and Toronto due to this problem. I think this is also a problem in England desi community, but for some reason desi’s in the United States don’t do this as much.
That’s evolutionary pressure rearing its head. The number one biological imperative of men is to spread their seed as far and wide and as often as possible. Adoption runs counter to that pressure because their offspring won’t carry their genetic traits.
this is why seahorses rock (the male is the one that is preggers)
Although I am quite a few years away from marriage, childbirth etc., I confess I find merit in this argument. For most Indians, the biggest determiner of their quality of life post-retirement, is how well-off their children are. One would not want their kid’s genes to be from a set of parents who left the kid in a cradle outside the tax collector’s office.
I’m sure this line of argument will make a lot of Sepia readers cringe, but sitting in your comfortable couches and indulging in “thought experiments” is quite far from the ground realities in India.
“I find that men are much less into the idea in general than women.”
True! As a male who eventually acquiesced to the wife’s demand, we ended up adopting a six-month girl from Kolkata 14 years ago and I must say it has been a completely “natural” parental experience. The word “adopted” never enters our mind. It is something we openly acknowledge without any value judgment as I would openly acknowledge my place of birth, my childhood experiences and the rest. My daughter is fully apprised of it as well and has even revisited the orphanage inside which she spent the first six months of her life. We tell her that she is the only Bengali we know who hates fish. (We are not Bengalis.) We have talked about the fact that she was probably born on the streets of Kolkata and turned over to an orphanage by a very poor mother who obviously did the best she could for her little baby. My daughter accepts all that as a fact of life. If there is any angst, we can’t see it in her totally normal teen life.
When we first adopted, we were eager to meet other adoptive parents and share experiences. After a year or so, the urge gradually disappeared for all of us because adoption was not a day-to-day issue in any family. Neither was it some kind of a looming threat in our lives, such as cancer, for which we would need group support. Some of us have remained friends but our relationship is based on the usual things that foster friendships.
My resistance to the idea of “acquiring” a baby was probably rooted in my time-warped Indian values, having left India as a 20-year old in 1972. Even though we have been frequent visitors to India and have many ties, the Indian side of me is probably a little more old fashioned than the values of comparable Indians living in India. I actually have cousins in India who adopted without any coaxing from the spouse or others.
In my case, it was not the fear of non-familial genes but a distaste for forming a parent-child relationship strictly by arrangement, though I can see why the Indian male would have a need for proprietarship over the gene . Our culture inculcates the concept of “vansh.”
One of my brothers-in-law, a white American who has studied India very closely, once made a very incisive remark to me and that changed my mind about adoption in a second. He said, “Isn’t it strange that in the Indian culture, marriages can be arranged but parenthood cannot be?” I believe – actually, I know – that the parent-child relationship in an adoptive situation takes less than a day to form. I have a dozen other adoptive parents to back me up. How long does it take to form a spousal relationship in an arranged marriage? (Please, no retorts. I am not against arranged marriage.)
Back to the post about cradles, WHAT A FANTASTIC IDEA! If my wife and I weren’t in our fifties, with not enough time left to raise a baby for the nest 18 years, we would be on the next plane to India to pick up a couple of babies.
Yes, I know there’s more evolutionary pressure on a man, what with not being able to be sure that a child is yours…but I still find it a bit funny that they should presume to tell me what it means to be a mother. In addition to having different evolutionary pressures, men are also probably a bit more likely to be conservative in general.
There certainly is some merit in the argument about inherited traits and intelligence, though several of the people I know who have adopted back home have had wonderful children, which perhaps skews my perspective, and leads me to believe that upbringing and care and a good education can go quite far. Plus there’s no guarantee that children born to “good” families will be particularly bright or hardworking either (my family offers some prime examples of that) and you don’t kick out your child because s/he doesn’t turn out to be a huge success. But spare me the pomposity of your “sitting in your comfortable couches and indulging in “thought experiments” is quite far from the ground realities in India,” please, I have spent most of my life in India and the people I know who have adopted are also mostly in India, and I plan to adopt in the near future as well.
I agree with D2 about giving people incentives to keep their girl children rather than communicating “it’s OK to want to get rid of your daughters.”
Still on the topic of children, there’s a really depressing survey reported in the new Outlook about 25% of Indian children being sexually abused. Ugh.
Such schemes actually do exist. Women have lower fees or feesmaaf schemes, not just at primary school levels but even for Govt run institutions of professional degrees. The problem of female infanticide is not due to lack of educational opportunities. It traces its roots more to archaic attitudes of dowry, a son helping the father in the family business/farm, attitude of a girl going away after marriage while the son continues the family name and the chauvinistic attitudes of son being the pride of the house while the girl being the izzat and thus bringing more responsibility and stress.
Floridian, that is so insightful. Thanks so much for sharing that, despite talking to a lot of people about adoption (my boss at work just adopted, but then he is not Indian), this was something which I guess subconsciously had bothered me whenever I think about adoption but I guess I had never put my finger on it.
Pleasant contrast to these retrograde Bachhans….
http://www.rd-india.com/newsite/other/facetoface_mar06.asp
14 desi-guy “I’m sure this line of argument will make a lot of Sepia readers cringe, but sitting in your comfortable couches and indulging in “thought experiments” is quite far from the ground realities in India.”
You will be surprised how many Indians and non-Indians embrace so-called ground realities to give other humans a chance in life through adoption. My adoptive case is nothing compared to some friends I have. We have white American friends who already had biological children and they still adopted two African American babies, one with severe hearing disorder attributed to the birth mother’s crack addiction. What kind of people do that? No, they are not missionaries or do-gooders, just an average American family.
And why would you assume that all these SM readers were merely indulging in idle conversation from their comfortable couches? Wouldn’t a certain percentage of SM readers end up adopting – I mean statistically speaking?
Girls’ education is already subsidized in most states (up to higher secondary I think). Dowry can get you behind bars. Sex-determination tests have been banned since 1994. In states like Maharashtra, if a woman registers police complaint within first year of marriage, her in-laws and husband can land in deep trouble. Implementing all these measures is tricky and govt. can only do so much. Plus there are always work-arounds.
Have you read about this recent horrible incident ?
Floridian @ 15. Thanks for sharing. Much respect.
This was first done in 90s in a Tamilnadu district in salem. It was met with success. Of all the bad things that Jayalalitha did this was one good thing that she did and it greatly reduced the famle infanticide.
Floridian, I think my comment ended up sounding a lot more cynical and bitter than I wanted to. My observation from the few years I have spent in the US is that parents usually assume responsibility of their children’s lives for the first 18 years, and children don’t really feel obliged to take care of their aging parents (or old people don’t feel like making themselves dependent on their kids). In this scenario, adopting has fewer risks attached. That said, I still look up to the “average American family” and hope that the number of such people only rise.
In India, things are slightly different, as you would know yourself, and this is what I was trying to point out.
From a numbers point of view, there aren’t enough adopters (Indias and non-Indians put together), as there are orphans. I think a large of number of these “cradle” babies will end up growing in the orphanages themselves, and I am not too thrilled about that.
24 desi_guy “I think a large of number of these “cradle” babies will end up growing in the orphanages themselves, and I am not too thrilled about that.”
First of all, no hard feelings. I have read your posts once in a while and you don’t seem to be a cynic.
Regarding your comment above, it is going to be a problem. But an orphanage is better than the streets. Go to your favorite desi store and rent “Salaam Bombay” in case you haven’t seen it.
“and children don’t really feel obliged to take care of their aging parents (or old people don’t feel like making themselves dependent on their kids). In this scenario, adopting has fewer risks attached.”
Now, I haven’t given any thought to the issue raised in your comment above. Is adoption a riskier poroposition in a culture that almost mandates taking care of aging parents and a less risky proposition in a culture that does not? Since an adopted child does not grow up with any different feelings towards the parents than a biological child, the only difference then would be cultural conditioning. Admittedly, there are plenty of cases of adopted children going on a hunt for their biological parents but that mission, based on my reading on the subject, does not detract from their love and responsibility for their “real-life” parents.
Incidentally, look out for the gradual dissipation of the typical Indian virtue of taking care of old parents. All the social forces of progress are against it. Urbanization, looser familial and social influences, smaller housing, increasing prosperity of Indian retirees along with new services available to them institutionally – hey, India could someday become just as “great” as America, no?
I wanna be adopted by Floridian 😉
Once a baby has been placed inside, an alarm bell will alert staff.
I love to imagine the kind of bell that sounds when this happens. Is it a ting-a-ling? A woot-woot-woot?
A shrill sound would just hurt little ears and make her cry. Ding-ding like a bicycle bell would be good or even maybe a foghorn like on the Addams family.
I think of Pavlov right now.:)
First, thanks to Floridian for sharing your experiences. Your comments were very enlightening. As for this plan, I’m with Abhi in that I’m generally in support of anything designed to limit infanticide and foeticide. However, the comparison with Japan worries me. Indian and Japanese cultures are very different and that which is good for one will not necessarily work with the other. I haven’t thought of any specific objections or concerns I have with the plan, but something about it rubs me the wrong way. Maybe it’s the idea of having “receptacles” (sp?) for babies, I don’t know.
He is right. In Japan if you abandon a baby they grow up under a Master and are either made into Samurai or into Ninjas depending upon their innate proclivity.
There is no such choice in India from what I know.
This is a good idea.
Although I think any family that participates in infanticide should be executed or imprisoned for life. We need to come up a scheme that will enable the police to arrest these cavemen barbarians. If possible have some spying to see which women and which communities the most dropped off babies come from and target the hell out of them. And since its the middle class that participates in this a lot, just getting a few of them will be enough to send a shockwave across the country.
It breaks my heart when I read about how misogynic Indian continues to be and I find it hard to believe that financial vouchers and waivers will make any difference in how women are valued. The idea that girls are mere burdens and women are mere reproductive accessories to men are much too deeply embedded. Will it always be this way?
I feel numb when I read this kind of stuff. Numb, ashamed (why?) and helpless.
===
1.05: males to every female in India, reversing the world average
600: rupees now, save 50,000 rupees later†is the advertising slogan of diagnostic teams with ultrasound machines that predict the sex of the unborn child
£18,000: can be the price of a wedding and dowry. Girls are killed because of the financial burden they place on their families
9.6m: more boys aged between 0-14 than girls
1949: Year when Indian women were granted full suffrage
54: per cent turnout of women voters in 2004 election, 62 per cent among men
10m: number of female foetuses aborted since ultrasound scanning was first used 20 years ago
1994: Year when scanning to find out gender was made illegal. It is widely ignored
0: the number of cases that have come to court
====
Zero cases brought to court. Can you imagine? Not a single one.
I feel numb when I read this kind of stuff. Numb, ashamed (why?) and helpless. Red Snapper,
I am against all this, as anyone else and then some. We all are.
However,
Please be careful if you jump on any news. Ratlam might have nothing to with foeticide at all.
Be careful. Unless, you are a fashionable denouncer, smoking a pipe, pontificating over biscuits and tea. Lazy arm waving does no good to any cause. If you care about this, read more rather than be a bandwagon wah, wah………….
Hey Kush, trust me, I’m not a self-flaggelating hair pulling kind of guy, but you have to admit there is a problemo with this issue, and it really gets underneath my skin that this is going on.
but you have to admit there is a problemo with this issue,
i admit it, my father admits it, my grandfather admits it……my mausi ji admits it too.
i know you are sincere, and i just wanted to point you……everything that comes out of india in media is not necessarily well researched news……….there is a lot garbage wah, wah…….look at Sir Pankaj Mishra…..let’s follow ratlam what it is carefully……….sensationalism and nonsense is a middle name of every indian…..and western media loves it.
It wasnt the Ratlam news story I was drawing attention to Kush, it was the addendum to the story that this post deals with that I linked to, about the opening of homes for unwanted baby girls, and the statistics I quoted above.
0: the number of cases that have come to court Red Snapper,
Please forgive me directing all my attention to you. Please do not believe everything hased by someone “lazy” journalist. I have all respect for all you anger but gullibility needs to be addressed to.
That is not all true – Zero cases.
1) From newspaper Hindu, 2002. This news is 5 years old.
Is this tiny, tiny, tiny tip of the iceberg? Yes. Are laws useless? Definitely yes. Is law enforcement useless, no doubt about it?
But still, a few Punjabi doctors were recently held guilty last year, I am not sure about the guilty part or were only charged in courts. There was also a sting operation by Sahara TV/ Star News on foeticide last year.
2) Harvard study on female foeticide within historical context. As early as 1901, they were guilty cases.
RS, my issue is not with your outrage but with you nearly devotional belief in vilayati angrezi newspaper.
This is my last comment on this thread. Let’s do something about it rather than parroting.
The only discussion of abortion in India I ever read is about female foeticide. I’ve noticed some commenters here don’t distinguish between abortion and infanticide – is this accounting typical of Indians? Is abortion ever discussed in terms of women’s rights? Sex selection aside, do women with unwanted pregnancies have access to safe legal abortion in India? Is there any irony in decrying Indians’ overall bias toward males, while simultaneously condemning women who terminate unwanted pregnancies as murderers?
Yes. At least in a big city like Mumbai. Back in college days a friend of mine had a relatively painless experience, proper medical care and all. She’s Roman Catholic. None of us were aware of pro-life debate at the time.
Nina, what you are talking about is two separate but related issues. One talks about female foeticide when it’s not usually an unwanted pregnancy, and after determining the sex of the child as female, the fetus is aborted. Similarly, once a child is born, if it is discarded not because it was not wanted only only because it was female, then we again have female infanticide. Both of these can and in many cases do occur with the permission of the mother also (though not always) and so it is less of a womens rights issue than one of cold blooded murder. The issue you mention is more about choice in the case a woman becomes pregnant without planning for it is not the same as female foeticide /infanticide. In that sense I am not sure why Indians (or anyone else) would account it differently.
Coming back to your questions about abortion rights. Abortion rights come into the public consciousness only when women (and men too) get the required sexual freedom socially. While this has changed in Urban India, in rural areas sexual freedom is still taboo. So if you think of womens rights as it would be in the US, you would be on the wrong track. What does exist is a lot of secret abortions where it is done discreetly – and these are usually for cases where a pregnancy occurs without a marriage. However,in such cases because of the secret nature of the whole thing, ill trained quacks can also get away with aborting babies while using unsafe procedures. So depending on where a woman goes for getting aborted, it could be safe or unsafe. The legalities don’t come much into play since everyone wants it under wraps.
Of course, nothing is ever simple or straight forward in South Asia. A very Hindu Nepal has blanket ban on abortion. The laws are quite messed up.
Yep. Never heard of the abortion ‘debate’ in India. However, abortion is definitely correlated to female infanticide (foeticide?) there. But due to overpopulation as an issue, not many people think of abortion as a bad thing overall.
Very unlikely to ever be a debate. For one thing, NGOs leftists groups and usual suspects will be caught in a bind, whether to support abortion (“women’s rights) or to end knowing it is correlated with foeticide (against women’s rights.
After the whole Indira Gandhi sterilization thing I dont think the Indian public is probably suspicious of government planning schemes (rightfully so) and it might be difficult to get them to understand the sort of barbarism they are engaging in.
My personal preference is to prosecute feoticide practicers to the full extent of the law, imprison for life or hang doctors performing sonograms. Also I bet its probably the same family that kills of its daughters over and over again, so throwing them in jail to rot away would be a good thing.
One more thing, it surprises me that in India there is such a cavalier attitude toward abortion. We will engage in some very conservative practices unncessarily but in this case Indians completely ignore religious teaching. Every religion in the country condemns the practice.
The so-called abortion debate has a lot of theological underpinnings specific to christianity and it makes sense only in an environment transformed by such a theology. To my pagan eyes, it seems quite a monstrous little biatch fight with no nuance for the diversity of human situations and an excessive hankering for precise and unforgiving definitions.
Probably, this debate fails to take root in India for the same reasons that other unnatural problematizations fail to capture the indian imagination, including 90% of the crap that is endlessly feted by our so called progressives. Are Indians immoral and “fallen” for not ‘getting’ the abortion debate or are they just able to struggle with these issues without the crap of commandments from above. Let me assure you that no one in india cares about “laws”. You have only to take a ride in an indian rickshaw to realize this.
Since we at SEPIA are so enlightened, can’t we make a pledge to ourselves (does not have to include others) to adopt children in general and adopt female children in speciific?
Touche.
Banned Hindu:
No, this is not just about Christian underpinnings. It is explicitly looked at as murder in Hindu texts. The soul enters upon conception, not birth in our teachings. This is not arguable. It is explicitly looked at as murder in Islam. I don’t know about Jainism, but this is a religion that teaches us not to harm any life form, probably very protective of fetus as well. Sikhism is the same. Buddhism who knows. Those religions cover 95% of the population. Its not about a failure to be moral, or a failure of understanding, its because abortion has been introduced to India like the rickshaw, as if its some sort of everyday device that can be used with second thought.
Metric system writes: >>It is explicitly looked at as murder in Hindu texts. The soul enters upon conception, not birth in our teachings.
First, the phrase “Hindu texts” is incomplete. One needs to understand that texts could be either Shruti or Smriti. There is no Shruti(to the best of my knowledge) that speaks about abortion (in any manner). There are Smritis that tell us that abortion is immoral, and there are also smritis that talk about conditions under which abortion is permissible (inter-caste/illicit pregnancies, where the girl is too weak to bear a baby etc). Ayurveda talks about herbs and roots that could be used to abort a baby. There are yoga positions that can kill a foetus.
Second: Hindu texts are not binding on Hindus unlike those from other religions. We would like to be free to pick and choose as we please according to the situation, thank you very much.
Good! Thanks to the individualism of Hindus all efforts to restrict freedom of individuals by overzealous politicians has been thwarted. Any attempt to cure a societal problem by the dictat and force of State should be brushed aside with contempt. What are they going to do next: ban some yoga postures?
As for those who are (fairly) well off financially and yet abort foetuses because they are female: What goes around comes around. You’ll get your day of reckoning, and it will be as painful to you as it was to the foetus.
M. Nam
It is the easiest thing in the world to get an abortion in India (can’t speak for the villages, but abortions are generally an urban thing, imo. I could be wrong). Neither is abortion regarded as a moral issue. Nor do women over-emotionalize the issue. I’d say all three points are a step up from the scenario in the West.
Abortion can be considered a moral issue only if you accept the following two facts from Christian theology: (a) Life is sacred, and (b) Life begins and ends at a particular point. Both of these notions are foreign to India. In fact Asian cultures in general considered duty and honor to be way more important than anything else and therefore death was never sentimentalized the way it is in the west.