“Reforms must come from within, and not from without. You cannot legislate for virtue”
-James Cardinal Gibson
In India, we are contented with legislating a piece of law without going into the practical difficulties, its feasibility and enforcement angle of the legislation. Resultantly, even well-intended laws become ineffectual in controlling and checking the menace which the law is intended to take care of. More often than not most of the legislations deteriorate into handy tools for the police men and the officials to earn a few extra bucks and a menace to the victims for whom the law was made and some die out their natural death. The noble CRADLE plan of the honourable Minister Mrs. Renuka Chawdury to rescue the girl children from the female foeticide falls under this category of impractical legislation.
This “nipping in the bud” of the girl children (female infanticide) was first discovered by the 1991 census when it was noticed that the national sex ratio was 945/1000 which has deteriorated to 927/1000 in 2001 census. This shows that the government’s carrot and stick policy on the welfare of the girl children have not worked satisfactorily in achieving the set targets despite several programmes like Swawalamban, Swayamsidha, Swa-shakti, Swadhar, Condensed Course of Education of Women etc. For their social and economic upliftment and empowerment these state sponsored programmes do not appear to be sufficient-James Cardinal Gibson
In India, we are contented with legislating a piece of law without going into the practical difficulties, its feasibility and enforcement angle of the legislation. Resultantly, even well-intended laws become ineffectual in controlling and checking the menace which the law is intended to take care of. More often than not most of the legislations deteriorate into handy tools for the police men and the officials to earn a few extra bucks and a menace to the victims for whom the law was made and some die out their natural death. The noble CRADLE plan of the honourable Minister Mrs. Renuka Chawdury to rescue the girl children from the female foeticide falls under this category of impractical legislation.
Even the middle-class is reported to be perpetrating this crime of selective abortion of female foetus. Sadly, in some parts of the country being a girl carries a stigma for the girls. Interestingly, only a certain states have recorded this abysmal sex ratio. Therefore, it can be inferred that this is more out of some social bias and cultural anomalies rather than of pecuniary reasons.
According to 2001 Census 48.2% population of India is women. That is a whopping 498.7 million women. If these large numbers of women themselves seek to not indulge in the murder of the girl children in the womb, the dismal picture of the sex ratio of 927/1000 would have been altogether altered dramatically. Alas, they are invariably a party to this heinous crime based on sexual discrimination!
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What is needed is a substantial change in the attitude of the people of those areas where the sex ratio is sliding at an alarming rate. As has been rightly said in the edit the focus needs to be on prevention and certainly not cure.
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