A few days ago, I wrote a surprisingly controversial post about a baby girl who had been buried alive, in Andhra Pradesh. Stupid me, I thought everyone would find such news abhorrent. But, in a shocking and to some, sickening twist, it would seem that condemning infanticide is wrong because it is more important to engage in the worst sort of cultural relativism.
Disagreeing with a man’s choice to bury his newborn granddaughter alive would be Western and especially Feminist stupidity. Are you perplexed? Wondering what I am going on about? Ah, then enjoy the following amuse bouche of comments from a few lurkers and readers, which that post inspired:
Dont get carried away by sensationalism
Everyone has it bad in India. you’re the only one who choose to single out the plight of women and measure it by YOUR western standards. It MUST be measured by Indian standards, i.e. the plight of Indian men, children, grandpas, grandmas, the whole society. Everyone has it bad in India, not just little girls.
just don’t forget, we live in the West, lets not judge everything by Western standards…If they want to kill their girl babies because girls mean one less hand to till the soil (by hand, of course), that is their buisness.
Poor people will do anything to survive. As long as its their family, and not anyone else’s, no one has a right to interfere.
you, possessing such a craving for attention, would rather start a thread focused on a single baby, a TOTALLY isolated incident, just so you can feel better!
Yes, I felt much better after that depressing thread, especially after I naively attempted to offer a counterpoint to it while proving that feminism can be a desi concept, too. As one of you said via email, after wading through comment-sewage, “I can’t believe there is so much misogyny and so little outrage here.”
::
Isolated. I thought of all those apologist quotes when I read the story which MasterVK was alert enough to submit to our news tab earlier today, about another newborn baby girl, who was also found and rescued:
AHMEDABAD: Her feeble cries help almost drowned in the din of the heavy downpour near Kankaria lake on Monday. Until a fireman found the newborn baby shivering in the rain, abandoned mercilessly without a piece of clothing on her body!
The child’s cries had gone unheard for hours and she had turned pale, lying in the incessant rains, near Kankaria lake. The baby was found by a team of firemen led by Rajesh Goswami who heard the faint cries early in the morning when they embarked on duty to check the oxygen levels in the lake.
Instead of the fish, the firemen found the freshly delivered girl who was dumped from the womb straight into the lake to die. “The girl did not have any clothing on her and had turned completely white. We had become sceptical about her survival,” said Goswami.
The firemen first thought of waiting for the police but were alert enough to realise that any wait may compromise the life of the infant. The fire personnel immediately took the girl to L G Hospital where she was admitted in the neonatal intensive care unit. “The girl was hypothermic as her temperature had dropped due to exposure in the rain. She was also covered in sand,” said Dr Abid Vijapura, assistant professor in the paediatrics department.
Dr Vijapura said that the girl was probably delivered at home as her umbilical cord was cut non-surgically and tied with a thread. “Her condition is stable. We have screened her for infections and will treat her accordingly,” he said.
I’ll close with a different quoted comment from one of you, because I hope someone else declares similar fifteen years from now:
Every time someone (sometimes me) reprimands my 15-year old daughter for her highly “spirited” personality, I can’t help but think that she was born on the streets of Kolkata (one can only guess), spared infanticide, and turned over to an orphanage at the tender age of 5 days.
Just look at her now!
I lived in that place for a long time!
I don’t think anyone’s dismissing class as a variable in this discussion, chachaji. Clearly, there are many factors at work here.
I think the issue with regard to this thread is what happened in comment #46: immediate dismissal of this as “India bashing.” That it happens in Mississippi, or Saudi Arabia, or in the backlots at Disney Studios isn’t really the point, is it? It happens in India, and it’s kind of indicative of a bigger picture problem with female rights and perception. Without seeking to demonize any one group, I do think that this post is relevant in certain ways to what might be called popular female memes. It’s been explored ad nauseum by better writers than I, and I’m so tired.
So off to bed with me. The trolls can have this thread. Rahul, you’re right.
Chachaji makes some good points.
Just because Punjab is one of the wealthier states, that does not mean everyone there is wealthy, and certainly not wealthy according to Western standards. It may be the more financially challenged amongst Punjabis and Haryanis who are doing these things. USA is seen as a wealthy nation in general, yet there are many poor people living here. In the same way, Punjab may be considered relatively wealthy by India’s standards, but there may still be alot of poor people living there.
A statewise breakdown of sex ratios will show that Kerala has a positive female:male ratio. 1058:1000 A good % of variation may be due to the gulf emigration but a good part of it is also due to lesser misogyny in Kerala. Rest of India has 933:1000. A statistically significant difference.
Life sucks in India but if you are a woman it sucks by a factor of 2 or even worse.
Very few Indian families adopt abandoned children (be it a boy or girl) even if they can afford it. Maybe that will change with increasing affluence.
I daresay greater good would come about when the NRI contingent invests in human capital as compared to exclusively focusing on steel and concrete.
Quite sickening! hopefully the baby girl will get adopted in a nice home.
Also, I agree with Rahul that comments in this thread have just gone totally weird.
Discuss away the evils of India with all your love. But provide a balance to the discussion, which unfortunately seem to be missing in the posts. Its mostly a dismissive account, and vindictive in nature. Of course a counter post will be provided on the lines of ‘my dad is the best’. I have nothing against discussions of this sort. Infanticide is a real issue in India, although I would like to see how much is prevalent today as opposed to say a two decades back. Also providing gender bias as the sole cause of some of these problems are misleading to say the least. Not again to say that gender bias doesn’t exist in India. The point is that these posts are not written with the sole objective of condemning a specific act that everybody should deservedly find abhorrent. There is always a cultural angle to it. Which in the absence of a more detailed analysis of that trend will inevitably lead to some form of India bashing. The more abhorrent the specific incident, the more damning it is against India and us Indians. I beg for more consideration, don’t forget its our country we are talking about in an environment frequented also by people with little understanding of the dynamics within India.
Maybe they are coming from a Dada Engine based Troll Generator?
(More OT fun)
Thanks for the post, Anna.
I wish there was some way to hear from the women (and men) who commit infanticide and abandon their baby girls. I know it’s very difficult and sensitive information, but I just wish there was some way we could get a glimpse into what these women who gave birth to these girls were thinking…maybe it’ll confirm that it was simply a case of, “She was a girl,” or maybe there’s something more? Point being, those are voices I would love to hear.
Ignoring the homophobic undertones of that sentence for now, I don’t think there is anything glaringly “telling” about same-sex platonic affection in India. Have you ever been to Italy? Lots of platonic male/male affection there. Beyond the platonic affection, boys in nearly all countries often have experimental same-sex encounters in their adolescent and teen years; it’s pretty normal. I actually quite like that fact about Indian society…two guys can show affection for each other without being considered “gross fags” like they are in America and other parts of the world. Ever seen the really frigid, robotic interactions between many straight guys in the US (except when they are drunk)? It’s caveman-like.
And what about the softcore feminists? Do they not get any respect?
All joking aside, it really depends on how you look at it. To me, the West’s obsession with breasts and breast implants is the West’s version of FGM. Don’t even get me started on anorexia, bulimia, size obsession, unequal pay, rape, domestic violence, etc.
Look. My whole reasoning in bringing all this up is not to fall into binary arguments which are seemingly the trend du jour on this board. God, it’s so exasperating – it’s either you’re a “hardcore feminist” or you’re a “jingoistic, image-obsessed Indian” when it comes to this debate. But I appreciate the more nuanced approaches of people like Anna and Linzi (and others). I wish to see more of that.
My point in bringing up Western examples of misogyny is not to negate Indian examples of misogyny; it’s to highlight the fact that patriarchy and woman-hating is a global problem. India kills its girls; America kills other countries’ girls. I am comfortable saying these two things at the same time: (a) girl killing is an endemic problem in India and the lack of outrage and attention is beyond exasperating, and (b) that doesn’t make the West morally superior.
I mean, Linzi, you said:
Actually, I DO hear that sentiment almost on a daily basis in the US. It’s usually expressed as, “Don’t be so PC” or “It was just comedy” or “Go back to where you came from if you don’t like it here.” I mean, from 9/11 onward towards the start of the Iraq war, many forms of everyday dissent were NOT appreciated. Americans have their own skeletons they need to deal with.
Just as we really don’t hear much about India’s infanticide problem, the American media doesn’t really report much on the real costs of the war in Iraq…you almost have to watch Al-Jazeera to see how much horror this country has inflicted on others.
I just wish things weren’t always so damn either/or.
Aanchal, I ask this question in all sincerity: Does America kill other countries’ girls, or other countries’ people? I am not saying one is better than the other, but are the Iraqi casualties slanted far more towards women than men? It is hard to get accurate information about Iraqi casualties in the first place, so I don’t know what to make of any numbers I see.
In America, unfortunately, the “you’re with us or against us” mentality starts from the very top.
Very articulate response, btw. Hopefully, your valiant attempt at restoring sanity to the thread will work.
Aanchal, you’re making some good points, and making them well. Thank you, and I hope you will continue to contribute your wisdom and eloquence here.
The problem is that there will never be any real statistics that could comprehensively account for the extent of female infanticide especially in India. So one has to rely on derived figures, and sampling evidence, whose nuetrality will always be doubted. Many figures floating around HRC, Gendercide and organizations on the forefront of this battle, are more than a century old, and most are examples of a the nature of a particular cluster of villages which displays a severe gender inbalance.
Also there is a tendency to quote historical examples of wide spread practises and assuming that the practises are still followed widely inspite of the obvious geopolitical, cultural and legal changes that have occured since. For example child marriage coupled with dowry were considered to be one of major reasons for parents killing off their daughters, and with both practises being outlawed, there is no reason why killing of daughters due to this reason should not be significantly reduced.
Then again, is this only a cultural phenomenon or is it economical? I agree with chachaji that there is a definite class correlation which cannot be ignored. Neither can culture be ignored, but there are cultural pockets in India where some of these practises (dowry, female infanticide etc) are non existent.
So the end result of an partial analysis is an uncritical acceptance of the extent of this practise put forth by some of these organizations in international forums. Any questioning is taboo, because this is such an emotional issue.
I would like to think that things are improving in India, and it is not an epidemic proportioned problem across India it once was, if it ever was. That is not to say that we should all call for a round of drinks and a pat on the back. There is a lot of work still to be done, implementation of laws against some of these evil practices is still lax, these laws have hardly made the dent they were supposed to. Education I would assume did most of trick.
spidy, it is not just foreign/international/agenda driven organizations. There have been statistics commissioned by the government as late as 1998, as well as a very thoughtful comparative essay by Amartya Sen in 1990 (which also addresses the culture/economy question), both of which establish the lopsided male-female ratio in India. The references are in the other thread. Amartya Sen repeatedly makes the (obvious, but apparently not so 🙂 point that this question must be discussed so we can understand the reasons behind it, and not resort to exactly the half-hearted rationalizations that you rightly complain about.
I too would think, and hope, that things are improving in India, and I agree that is one aspect that we (at least, I) don’t seem to have adequate information on.
Aanchal, if you think you don’t hear much about female infanticide because the media choses to be quiet about it, you need to see some Indian news channels and experience a rude shock. Indian media believes in more sensationalism than Anna:) But of course these things when and where they happen are kept under wraps.
Two Comments: 1. to address one of hte main issues people keep bringing up:
to the extent that one believes discrimination is largely a economic phenomenon, improved economic opportunities might be thought to lead to lower discrimination but there is little evidence that this is true. in fact, if south korea et al are anything to go by and we use sex 0ratios as our measure of discrimination, rising incomes could well lead to more discriminatino (witness gujarat or punjab for instace). there is some evidence that suggests though that discrimination is less in areas where women are more likely to work outside the home (although causality is clearly hard to establish).
i guess one big unanswered question is how public policy/ civil society can affect any of this.
one important stylized fact, based on nationally representative data, are the better outcomes for girls in South India (south of the vindhyas basically although there are clearer demarcations around) and by outcomes I mean immunization rates and literacy (years of education). girls in TN, AP, Karnataka (not just Kerala) are on average more likely to be immunized and complete more years of schooling relative to girls in UP, punjab, bihar, MP, Rajasthan, Gujarat, WB (this seems to be more true for ‘forward castes’ than for SC/ST designated households btw). this holds true even after you compare just families with (roughly) the same amount of per capita income. i forgot to mention of course, that sex-ratios (at birth) in the ‘northern’ states I mentioned are all more skewed towards boys than for the southern states I mentioned.
spidy: here’s a research idea that should make an interesting paper. by a supreme court judgements states are legally required to submit a list (district or perhaps block) of all ultrasound centers. of course there will be issues with accuracy but trends will be subject to fewer criticisms. one can then just look at the corresponding block (or district) sex ratios and measure the correlation (of course one could do fancier things, but this by itself should be a pretty clear indicator)
to answer chachaji’s request for decile breakdowns: if we look at sex-rations and use the nfhs surveys and use asset-indices (since nfhs doesn’t collect income information) then punjab has a lower sex-ration at all deciles relative to (say) tamil nadu. this is true even if you break it further by caste (although some differences are now less precisely estimated because of small sample size issues). i think its safe to say that as far as punjab and sex-ratios are concerned the difference is there across the entire distribution of income.
Rahul, every organization has an agenda, including the government of India;) These organizations may all be well meaning, but somehow the numbers put across mostly put across a very telling indictment against india, although my limited exposure show that sort of evil to have a limited practise today. I haven’t read A.S’s paper yet so i cannot comment, but hopefully he will refrain from classifying all Indians as chauvinistic sexist pigs.
Thank you, yes, this is exactly the sort of thing I was wondering about. I would still ask if the deviation of the actual sex ratio from the ‘natural ratio’ is skewed by income decile or whether it is constant, relative to the ‘natural’ ratio, across all income deciles. If the latter, a cultural, not an economic explanation would be indicated; but if the former, it would be a mix of both, how much depending on what the skew was.
There have been statistics commissioned by the government as late as 1998
Yes.
However,
Do you know how the statistics was collected and the assumptions. The ratio are computed through Government of India Census looking at the ratio of boys and girls at the age 5. It does show abnormal disparity in sex ratio, however the disparity number is a combination of four factors: a) female infanticide, b) girls are neglected, and c) a girl child inherently more vulnerable to ravages of poverty, and d) even medical causes prevalent in tropical country like Hepatitis B, etc being manifested at the age 5. Factors a) and b) can be fixed though activism, slogans, etc. but c) and d) are deep rooted malaise. Nobody really knows the real breakup.
One can argue, that sampling from South Delhi and parts of Punjab should have factor c) minimal, as they are relatively affluent parts of India. A place like Kerala that almost have normal sex ratio at the age of five would show d) cannot be the major cause in entire India. However, all this is indirect inferences. There is some small sampling in government hospitals at the time of birth. 99% of births in India are never recorded, and most (majority) of abortion are in the back alleys with no paper trail and official record. Therefore, there is no hard data in India, as one can get from, as one has in US, western Europe. Data collection in India is in dark ages, so all these 11 million, 20 million numbers are more than often bogus (not always), and even distracting.
Sure, female infanticide is a real serious problem in India. However, I seriously doubt that the most vocal, shrill commenters @ SM from last few days on this topic even know the basic assumptions in data, and the implications. That is why I like chachaji’s mature response on this topic.
Thanks, Rahul and Chachaji. Rahul, I don’t know if there are more female Iraqi casualties, but you’re right – wartime killing obviously targets men as well. I was just making a broad comparison to make a point in a moment of rhetorical clusterfuckery. I really don’t want to fall into the rhetoric of advocating solely for “innocent women and children,” as if the men are all guilty of something.
Spidy, for me the positing of economics vs. culture in regards to girl killing is very problematic because, to put it simply, it’s placing the impetus for change on state-centered resources and infrastructure instead of individuals in India. Despite the compelling evidence that girl killing occurs across class lines, I’m willing to say that the problem may be a combination of culture, economics and other factors. I am now, however, wiling to place the onus of the problem on economics because it is an inefficient way to tackle this problem. Poverty allievement places much of the burden on government resources and directives, and even then you are not guaranteed a decrease in the number of girl killings. A not-so-elegant example would be education in the US. Many folks rightfully argue that the fundamental problem is the lack of elementary/middle/high school funding and infrastructure; this produces inequalities in access to resources. A private college, however, might take the position that instead of waiting around for the complete overhaul of these public schools, let’s institute some sort of affirmative action program from those applicants from disadvantaged backgrounds. Do you see what I’m getting at?
But the great thing about sociological problems is that they can be addressed outside the realm of the state. Attitudes embracing male preference are passed along from generation to generation, within families and communities, at small gatherings and over-the-top weddings. They exist in acidic quips of the tongue, annoying questions, exasperated reactions, bahu-saas telenovelas. You can start a cultural shift without a massive amount of capital. Government support sure does help get things moving, but the first few steps don’t require the same amount of invesment that poverty relief does. Of course, this doesn’t mean that poverty relief and economic strife should be put to the backburner; movements can exist side by side. But I am not relying on any state to be the frontrunner in advocating for the humane treatment of girls and women; that must begin with individuals. And that is what I mean by culture.
project idea: Are you trying to determine the correlation of the deviation in the sex ratio from the natural one based on the number of ultra sound centers in the district? Sounds like a good idea, but you would have to somehow factor in the income level of the district for the study to have any real meaning.
Kush, can you elaborate what you mean by (c)? As for (d), my understanding is that several studies have shown that all things being equal (food, medical care etc.), girls are more resistant to disease, both pre-birth and soon after birth.
Personally, I look at female infanticide as one of the manifestations (at the more horrific end) of the general specter of female deprivation and discrimination against women. It seems to me that the fundamental thing that is going to change it is an increase in the perceived “value” of women. One of the things that could probably help the most in this regard is improved opportunities for gainful employment outside the home, where there is a clear monetary value attached to work done by women.
I meant in a grinding poverty situation, the cards are decked against a girl child, for example iron deficiency.
Also, there is a Harvard study that Hepatitis B plays havoc with sex ratio.
Again, I think nobody really knows that real contribution, and possibly HBV is just a small factor (and the original Harvard study was more a hype but still even the critics cede its contribution). I do believe that c) and d) causes can only account for some disparity, and others are from causes a) and b) in India. My point was: shouldn’t people be aware of the full complexity of the situation.
Kush, I’m aware, especially considering my parents don’t have birth certificates and have made-up birth dates 🙂
Rahul, you bring up an interesting point…I wonder about the value attached to boys and girls in different parts of India. While the economic value of women certainly helps things progress, I also wonder how much value is placed in the essential nature of “boyishness” (for lack of a better word!). As in, how much value is placed on a boy based on the seemingly inherent qualities they possess. Dunno. I once heard a mother say that she prefers boys because they are “easier to love.” I was like, those rugrats pee in your face when you’re changing their diaper, what’s to love about that?! (I kid.)
Kush, I am aware of Oster’s work, and agree that it was tantalizing, but also extremely well marketed, as you point out. I didn’t think that you were referring to that because you said something about Hep-B at age 5, whereas Oster’s analysis was that Hep-B actually tilted the sex ratios at birth. In any case, it is an additional wrench in the works, although even Oster says that it explains at most half the observed disparity.
I also fully agree with you that shrillness alone does not advance the discussion.
I have no idea what to make of that. All I can say is that I am pretty sure it wasn’t my mom, at least, not after she had me 🙂
That wonderful image reminds me of the description in the Namesake (novel) of Gogol throwing up into Ashima’s mouth once when he was a baby, and she held him up in the air. But that’s something girls can do too. Hurray for equal opportunity!
because you said something about Hep-B at age 5
Rahul,
I meant that sex imbalance caused by Hep-5 (big or small), is first recorded at the age 5 by the data collection agency (GOI census). That is what I meant.
umm… its worse if you happen to be a girl and are seriously unwell…i have seen it in good middle class families. This article was in the TOI. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/Father_throws_girl_into_river/articleshow/2192706.cms
I meant Hep-B instead Hep-5
sk, that is a pretty awful story, but there is nothing in that specific article that says or immediately makes me think it was because it was a girl. I am not saying that means that wasn’t the cause, but everybody can interpret that story as they desire, and things could soon devolve into a shouting match as Kush points out. Soon, we will be discussing free drinks and outwitted men! While anecdotes do help make problems immediate and involve people emotionally, it is hard to draw conclusions about a billion strong country based on anecdotes.
Kush, thanks for the clarification on Hep-B and census.
Rahul,
You must remember India has absolutely no baseline sex ratio (worth any statistical significance) of sex ratio at birth.
Except, tiny data sets from Government hospitals which has no statistical significance.
The baseline for the data is age 5 data, you are looking at the composite effect at that time.
Kush – fair point. While female infanticide draws headlines and strong emotions, my bigger point is what I describe in #73, and all these cumulative effects show up. I haven’t been very exercised by the contribution of female infanticide directly and specifically to the skew, and you raise valid questions about the data available to answer that question.
24/7: “the crux of the problem–one that is prominent on sepiamutiny too–, as with 90% of desi problems, is severe sexual repression (courtesy of middle eastern and white/christian invaders)“
Do you really think that sexual repression is the core problem in South Asia (and this via “invaders” from the Middle East and Europe)? You may have had a valid point in your arguments before that comment (or perhaps not) but I dismissed everything you said after it. If you stop beating the drum of Indian nationalism for a few minutes you’d recognize that “native” Indian cultures had gender biases, many of the Muslim (yeah, I can see past your code words) invaders were not Middle Eastern, and that Middle Easterners have a pretty colorful history with sexuality.
a. the oster paper is almost certainly wrong in that hep1b prevalence can only explain a very small fraction of hte observed sex-ration imbalance. for the most conclusive argument against, read http://homepage.ntu.edu.tw/~mjlin/ and also oster’s (in my opinion weak) response on her web-page at uofc.
b. the project idea issue: controlling for some measure of economic development blockwise shoudl be possible using the census which has some proxies. however, just doing a before-after comparison and comparing high and low ultra-sound blocks will go a fair way towards addressing some of your criticisms.
c. while sex-ratios at birth are not available in ways comparable to the US, the nfhs (national fertility health survey) has an extremely detailed birth history for all female respondents and is a nationally representative sample so inferring sex-ratios in the cross-section even at (say) age 1 or so is possible. the data isn’t perfect, but it goes a large way towards answering the quesstions here.
d. regarding kush’s “female infanticide, b) girls are neglected, and c) a girl child inherently more vulnerable to ravages of poverty, and d) even medical causes prevalent in tropical country like Hepatitis B, etc being manifested at the age 5.” none of these can explain the precipitous decline in the sex-ratio from 1991 census to 2001 census unless you also argue that at least one of these factors also grew more pronounced during this period. Prima facie, it is not obvious that (b) or (c) or (d) changed that drastically during the nineties (although this is not entirely clear, see http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/resolve?id=doi:10.1086/511195) while it is well documented that there was a huge explosion in ultrasound clinics during the nineties (witness the supreme court directive on this as a result of pils). so, while all these factors lead to a skewed ratio, it is hard for me to buy that the change in the skewness is caused in large part by the last three.
forgot to add: what seems to get missed here is the steep decline in these rations from 91 to 01 census. of all the reasons one can think of why there is gender discrimination or why sex-ratios in india are skewed which ones were exacerbated in the 90s?
At some level I can understand why some people in India hope for a boy instead of a girl. You have to give huge amounts of dowry when your daughter gets married and once she gets married she usually loses any ability to help her parents financially. There is no social net in India and a lot of old people have to completely rely upon their children to take care of them. On the other hand if you have a boy, you actually get the dowry when the boy gets married and the boy can take care of you when you are old. Also you can live in the boy’s house when you are old which is way more common and acceptable than living in your married daughter’s house when you are old.
I find it funny how the word isolated is in quotes when discussing topics like infanticide and female rights in South Asia, but the same word is not when the topic is terrorism and the religion of “peace” :/
I have been reading this discussion with great interest as I run an organization to help women and children in Asia. Female infanticide doesn’t even begin to address the issues involved. Lack of education and opportunity, early marriage, marital rape, lack of education for girls compared to boys even in wealthy families, lack of opprtunity to grow as people for the most edcuated and talented women, after they are married, are only some of the intital issues.
While all goodwill seems to be directed towards the baby girl, the goodwill seems shallow unless backed by demonstration of understanding of what it takes to actually raise a girl in India, or for that matter in any deveoping or traditional society.
These families live on under a dollar a day.How many of you would give up your latte to pay for one girl’s education, or marriage expenses? How many would give up a drink at the bar, to pay for five? I am not asking you do, but to not understand the economic horror of this situation, combined with the misogyny, is a little bit of naive outrage. The economic horror combined with misogyny, is what creates this ugliness. To be highly outraged is defnitely the right moral response. To be able to see the whole picture and look for solutions would be the right intellectual response. There are ways in each one of us actually contribute to this ugliness, or maybe condone it in our own situations.
The misogyny and economic deprivation are entertwined. The reason many hate women is they see them as consumers, and not as economic producers. How many women are able to not only pay for themselves, as well as pay for children that they may have even after being given the best opprtunitites? This question cannot be posed to women who dont have opportunities, but to the kind of women on sepiamutiny who have the best of education, opportunity, and consciousness.
The issue is economic to begin with. There are many layers of factors that distort it even further.
People do kill and commite morally heinous crimes for money. It is heinous, but that is what most war and interntational crime is all about.
All babies killed for fear of not being able to support them fall into this realuity, the world over, and is not unique to India, girls etc. The reason the male child is not kileld is he is seen as a harbinger of hope as a future wage earner, and the girl is not. I work with a friend who has been working with child trafficking for over 15 years and in that world, noone kills a girl child. She is not seen as a consumer but possibly as a future wage earner. All pregnant women killed for fear of economic burden of the child or a possible divorce fall into this category.
To make a girl safe is to bring her into the world only if the women herself can support the baby, not to place the burden on an unwilling male. I dont mean to make a provocative statement, but this is a choice available only to the most empowered women. Only they can conduct themselves with the responsibility and dignity that can make them examples for poorer women to follow. Poor women don’t often have the choice of reproduction. However, if they do have children, they fight to support them for the most part even in poverty. I am learning this through my travels, work. and talks with many NGOs in developing countries. The Grameen bank model is just one example.
Just some thoughts. The outrage expressed is from the heart. That is a good start. But only when its tempered with reason and compassion, can any good action result. This can only be eraadicated through genuine good action.
This post is a counterpoint to the “isolated”-meme which kept infecting the original post on this issue. Several people on the first thread, who are quoted in the post above, kept insisting that the other attempt at infanticide was an isolated incident– this post asks that they reconsider what “isolated” means.
Since this is a direct reaction to that first post, there have been two posts about infanticide in a matter of days, not that there is some quota which the bloggers must adhere to, versus following their interests. This post was a direct rebuttal to the ignorance spewed in the comment thread to the first post. This could be seen as an attempt at a correction of the disturbing mood here. Not in India or America or anywhere else. Here. On this blog. The only people quoted in this post were commenters from this blog.
This is not about India-bashing, sensationalism and of course, more disparaging remarks towards the author and the shrill, naive people who recognize what she was trying to accomplish, which was dialogue. No one will give up a latte to satisfy the demands of those who tut-tut at the merely outraged if they don’t recognize a problem in the first place. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We need to address what happened here before any of you expect any of us to fix the world.
Also, the fact that “shrill” is being tossed about so generously is further proof that consciousness-raising about feminism needs to occur here. “Shrill”, eh? How dare the author have such a female response to this isolated incident which can be explained away by hepatitis, economics and the nuanced approach which is conveniently almost impossible for the actual audience of this blog to have, since they are not from India. Poor ABCDs and their inability to have an intellectual response. Let’s agree to throw our hands in the air, since talking about it isn’t good enough and go get lattes. Or drinks. Preferably several.
Enough.
http://www.nj.com/news/expresstimes/nj/index.ssf?/base/news-5/1184040910175750.xml&coll=2
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21908770-5007146,00.html
http://media.www.theranger.org/media/storage/paper1010/news/2007/07/02/YouSa/Abandoned.Baby.Givennew.Beginning.Hope-2920283.shtml
http://www.thisislancashire.co.uk/news/localnews/display.var.1517010.0.baby_murdered_with_blunt_object.php
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6193964.stm
chachaji, I have been one of the most strident disavowers of the “class argument.” This is not because I believe there is no class dimension (please see prev. post), but because as we have seen in Punjab and elsewhere, the infanticide in India is substantially skewed by gender ACROSS classes. There are many countries where people either kill their newborns or are unable to provide for them because of their poverty. That said, with the exception of China and SEAsia, NONE of these other LDCs have a gender imbalance that even begins to compare to India. People can continue to argue economics and class until the cows come home, but until someone can show me that this alone magically rectifies girl-killing, I remain incredibly skeptical.
And while I have really enjoyed Aanchal’s posts (please stay around!), I cannot agree that economics is the solution to this problem. I do believe that India’s poverty is worth addressing, and I hope that it would ameliorate some of these gender tensions. That said, I am unoptimistic so long as it is culturally sanctioned (and at times, encouraged!) to kill your female child in the pursuit of son-preference. Or worse, to underfeed her, deny her an education, etc. Women’s lives are not held in the same regard as men’s lives through much of India, despite legislation to the contrary. This is just the reality on the ground. It’s true that misogyny/patriarchy exists world wide, including in the U.S. If it did not, why do we see such a large number of female babies put up for adoption relative to boys? However, with the exception of the desi community in the U.S., I have not met any other ethnic community (in the U.S., today) that systematically aborts its female children on a comparable scale. That said, I think it is important for us to get out of our defensiveness bubble and address head on that the way this manifests among desi communities is a cancer.
I feel like a broken record repeating myself; frankly, I am incredibly frustrated by this conversation and the apologists for female infanticide. I also feel that reducing this to an argument poverty is more comfortable for many of us because we can pretend this is about capital flows, employment, and class instead of talking about the fundamental social factors that are driving this. Just as discussing class is relatively taboo in the U.S., discussing misogyny seems to be one of the taboo topics when it comes to discussions of the des. I, for one, appreciated Amitabh’s discussion of his own preferences for his (potential) offspring — I think these are the questions we need to ask ourselves. What are our own biases, and what can we do to help promote a community in which having a daughter is just as cherished as having a son? This can be legal mechanisms (e.g. female inheritance, different views of marriage, etc), greater access to human development opportunities, but it is also just as simple as giving a solid thappar upside the head when people start lamenting someone’s “unfortune” for having a daughter.
If the sex ratio in india is off due to female infantici, shouldnt that effect the culture? If the supply of women relative to men drops, and the relative “price” of women rise, shouldnt a woman become a scarce person? Shouldnt she have a lot of power? For example, if there are like 3 guys in a village that want to get married, and 1 girl, the girl can pick and choose. Cant she start asking for money and stuff? “im the only game in town…”
In regards to class, everything that I’ve read on the subject suggests that affluent communities in India (north India especially) actually have worse sex ratios than the rural poor; for example, the sex ratio in Delhi’s most exclusive neighbourhoods is an appalling 784:100. I remember a post by Razib that suggested that more pronounced son-preference among elite groups is a cross-cultural phenomenon; I think he used the Masaii as an example.
What will happen to these babies now? Are they going to be put up for adoption? Or is the government going to step in somehow? Does anyone know? Is ANYTHING good going to happen?
@93 to go after something with so much hate?? a lot of the apologists, i agree are making excuses, but I say there’s more than just a sex bias, so do I side the old man? hell no and I dont think any one would, some of us are just trying to say there are just more reasons than that but i guess you are just too fond of playing the ‘broken record’ good luck to you! ohh thnks for cluttering the board with your ramble and diatribe
Manipuri,
Not entirely so, unfortunately. I remember reading a while back that there was a surprisingly poor female to male ratio among middle class Sikhs in the Delhi area.
While I do agree that poverty and economics play a huge role in the gender bias, plain misogyny is a factor too. Basically what Sumita said.
If the sex ratio in india is off due to female infantici, shouldnt that effect the culture? If the supply of women relative to men drops, and the relative “price” of women rise, shouldnt a woman become a scarce person? Shouldnt she have a lot of power?
You would think so, but I’ve read that in these situations it’s actually worse for women because it leads to increased rape and kidnapping – the idea that if women are a scarce commodity, the men must take what they can get by force.
I’m sorry I don’t have the link to where I read this offhand. Someone correct me if I’m wrong (in fact, I would really like to be wrong on this matter).
According to a book I’ve read called ‘Female Infanticide In India: A Feminist Cultural History’, female infanticide in pre-colonial India was restricted to those communities (the Rajputs, for example) that had strong traditions of hypergamy and dowry. In modern India, many communities that used to practice bride-price (non-high-caste Hindus, Muslims) have switched to dowry instead, and a consequent devaluation of females has occurred. It’s wise to be wary of simplistic economic analyses, but I think a genuine attempt to root out dowry will have an effect on the status of women in India.