AN AMINA HERE, AN AMELIA THERE

 

5. AN AMINA HERE, AN AMELIA THERE

There is a saying in Telugu that raising girl children is like watering the plants in the neighbour’s farm. The benefit will go to someone else.

Though the Year of the Girl Child was celebrated with much fanfare, the fact remains that many people have not overcome the feeling of disappointment when a girl is born in the house. Take the case of ten year old Amina of Hyderabad. There was a great furore in the media when this child was about to be given in alleged wedlock to an aged Arab groom, one who was well past his sixties. Community leaders and social reformers all came together to raise their shrill voice of protest against and indignation at this reprehensible action the part of her parents.

Though it was given the tag of marriage, what was evident in Amina’s case was that the Arab had literally purchased the girl. Amina’s father was a poor rickshaw puller. What prompted him to sell his daughter for Rs 6,000 was the call of hunger that defied all laws. The issue involved is not one that could well be dismissed as middle class appraisal of the man as a fiendish father.

Ameniocentesis is a medical procedure that, among other things, helps to determine the sex of the child to be born. It was widely misused for the purpose of female foeticide. If it was found that the child to be born is a female, destroy it. A survey taken up in Mumbai showed that out of the 8,000 cases of medical termination of pregnancy, 7,999 cases involved female foetus. When protests against this practice became strident the government enacted a law banning sex determination tests.

The condition of the girl child in India is indeed pitiable. Studies have shown that in the case of nutrition, girls fall much below the optimum level, getting less than two-thirds of the norm. The government’s policy on birth control was also biased as priority was given to female sterilisation.

Child labour is prohibited by law but tens of thousands of girl children are employed in match factories, weaving units and zari factories across the country. They are made to work in unhealthy conditions. Studies have shown that the eye sight of girls working in silk weaving units and computer factories steadily deteriorate to the point of no return in a matter of five to eight years. In the slate factories in Madhya Pradesh child workers die from silicosis, an occupational lung disease caused by inhalation of crystalline silica dust. In Ferozabad child workers get scalded while working in glass factories. In the powerloom units in Dindi children who are not afflicted by Byssinosis are rare. What the locksmith units of Aligarh give their child workers is a disease named pneumoconiosis.

A majority of the victims of rape are girls aged below 16 years.  The practice of pushing girl children into prostitution in the name of god is still prevalent in many places. Devadasi, Bhavin, Devali, Naikin. . . . it is named differently in different states. . In the red light areas of Mumbai more than 40 per cent of those indulging in flesh trade are devadasis. A good many of them are minor girls. It is prostitution in the name of god.

What is the position in regard to women’s education? According to the census of 2011 the literacy rate among women was only 65.46 per cent as against 82.14 in the case of men. As for school enrolment, for every 100 boys going to school the intake of girls is only 55. The dropout rate is very high in the case of girls. Out of ten girls enrolled, only two complete primary education.

It may sound unbelievable that there exist some weird, horrifying practices that numb human sensibilities. Take the case of baby farming that was prevalent in Victorian England. And one of its most notorious practitioners was Amelia Dyer. What she did was to take care of expectant mothers who were about to give birth to children out of wedlock. Amelia, a trained nurse, not only took good care of such women upto the delivery, but also took over the responsibility of raising the children in secret. For her services she naturally received a hefty fee. She looked after the children well and they in turn seemed to like this foster mother.

But things changed one cool morning when a clothes bag was changed upon by a boatmen in river Thames. They opened the bag only to find the limp body of a bonny infant. The police were called in and a search of the river bed helped them to pick up seven such bags. Investigations finally led the police to the doorsteps of Amelia Dyer.

Her practice was simple, but gruesome. Take the infants from their mothers. Get a big fee for their upkeep, look after them for a week, then strangulate them, put them in bags and dump them in the Thames. And continue to get the upkeep money, for free.

Did Amelia emigrate to Tamil Nadu. She is now at Usilampatti. If a girl child was born in Usilampetti many things would be done to put an end to her. Grains of paddy would be put into the infant’s mouth. After a time the infant would be suffocated to death. Another method was to grind a poison berry easily available at Usilampatti and put that paste into the infant’s mouth. If that was of no use there were Killer moms available on hire. They would smear poison on their nipples and breastfeed the newborn to death.

It was a matter of great relief that of late some social workers had taken up a powerful camapign against this obnoxious practice of female infanticide. Yet if you were born a female it meant sorrow and suffering till death.

It appears as if a grinning Amelia Dyer has left Usilampatti and has moved over to Japan. In Japan there is a rule. Children will not be permitted to enter schools after nine a.m. The gate in front of the school will be closed. One girl was slightly late in coming to the school one day. To get in before the gate was closed she dashed in, only to hit the gate and fall down even as a lady teacher was slamming the gate shut. The heavy gate hit her head and she died of a crushed skull. In another incident in an island near Hiroshima, authorities of a school decided to discipline a sixteen year old girl student. She was put in an iron box. Probably they forgot about the box, because they opened it three days later, by which time the girl was asphyxiated to death. Japanese mothers came out of their homes to protest against such draconian disciplinary measures in the schools.

If in Japan girls were tortured in the name of discipline, in Mexico and Ethiopia it was in the name of poverty. In the three extensive waste dumps in Mexico, one could find not only millions of rats but also over 10,000 destitute people, half of them children, mostly girls. These children were born and brought up in the dump heaps. They also die there. There was no escape for them from the mafia gangs that exploited them.

In Recife port in Brazil, one’s mind is paralysed by the depravity and bestiality of man that push even ten year old girls into the flesh trade. Brazil alone is said to have half a million children pushed into prostitution. In the famine stricken Ethiopean villages visitors will be disturbed to find emaciated young children searching for the tubers of shrubs to satiate their hunger. In Sivakasi, the world’s biggest centre of child labour, even children as young as four years dip their hands in poisonous material to make fire crackers.

We see in Bangkok, capital of Thailand, much more savagery and cruelty than anywhere else. Every year thousands of people from far and wide reach Bangkok to make a beeline to Madam Susie’s brothel. There are girls aged between ten and twelve, none of them reaching that den by accident. They are all pushed there deliberately by their own parents out to make money out of them.

There is a saying that if the student has not learnt, the teacher has not taught. Similarly if the girls are neglected we can say that their mothers are not taking care of them. Most of the mothers get a dull face when they learn that the child born to them is a girl. If the siblings fight at home, mothers invariably side with the boys.

A recent study was an eye opener. Compared to the boys, more girls stop their education midway. Mothers do not like their sons to be engaged for domestic chores. Boys have more freedom to spend money. Even if the girls make independent income, the custom is to get a major share for the house. After marriage the son brings home a substantial amount as dowry. In the case of the girl the dowry is an outflow. Boys have the chance of getting jobs and getting income. In the case of most girls it will be lifelong kitchen work

The practice of neglect of girls is not a new phenomenon. Centuries ago Aristotle told a group of youngsters: Compared to men, women have two teeth less in their mouth. The youth totally believed him. Aristotle went one step further: Compared to men, women are imperfect. He cited the case of a circle and an egg. The circle is perfect, but the egg is not. Eggs are laid by hen. So hens are imperfect. Hens are female. So women are imperfect.

The effort to improve the social status of girls has to start from home itself. The approach towards girls has to be changed first.

There are certain urgent steps needed for bettering the lot of girls. There should be adequate representation for women in our parliamentary democratic set up. Apart from parliament and legislatures, women should be given representation proportional to their population in the local bodies, cooperative institutions and quasi-government bodies.

Though child labour is an offence under the law, there are provisions that cannot be enforced. Such provisions should be changed and it should be ensured that child labour is toally banned.

About half of our population are women. Half of them are girls. According to a definition by SAARC, a female aged upto 20 years is defined as a girl.

Though we could put an end to social evils like child marriage, our attitude to the girl child continues without change.

Charles Dickens said about the 19 century England that it was not an ideal place for the children to live in. Perhaps the description applies to present day India where Aminas and Usilampattis get repeated.