June 16th, 2015

P E R S P E C T I V E on female feticide 

images from google

I believe that a change in perspective has the potential to save the vanishing girls of India. 

So far the schemes launched by the central and state governments in India to stop female feticide have focused more or less on financial incentives and/or education. I have been reading a lot of the analysis of these schemes, why they failed, why the child sex ratio has dropped in the states where maximum resources were poured in? 

I believe that a change in perspective has the potential to save the vanishing girls of India. The two stakeholders that these schemes have been targeting are primarily 

1. the people who seek pre-natal sex determination and termination of pregnancy
   
2. those that perform sex-determination and termination procedure

Broadly two types of measures have been adopted:

1. Financial incentives to the maybe seekers to encourage the value of the girl child
2. Punishment strategies for performers

For example, the government of Rajasthan increased the prize money for whistle-blowers to Rs. 2 lacs from 1 lac. in March 2015.  

My proposal is that instead of punishing, why don't we reward.. Reward the medical fraternity to change the perspective, It is no surprise that the medical lobby is powerful. Reward those that are doing the right thing by not disclosing the sex of a fetus. Reward the society by keeping things transparent. Link the registered clinics with a central government server. Collect daily data, analyze it over a period of time. Reward by encouraging good practices.
There's nothing to lose. A change in perspective is worth trying when we are talking about saving girls that are killed at an enormous rate: 
 2 girls every 5 minutes.