“There are no girls. If there is one in a house, the father is like a king. He can demand anything,” said Prahland Singh, the head of Bhorki village in Rajasthan."

This is worrisome. ..because it goes precisely against your clever answer to the supply and demand quandary. I too assumed the reason supply and demand don't work is that the demand (marriage) occurs so far away from the supply (pregnancy/childbirth) that information is too imperfect and people instead attack the problem with money. But the above implies that the demand (status) occurrs much closer to the birth of the presumably unwanted baby girl.

So while I am quite sure that infanticide is a huge huge huge problem, I am now concerned that the Hep B problem that China very possibly has on top of its infanticide problem is also happening in India--because there is nothing that will solve that problem, and women will increasingly become chattel.

God this is so frustrating . . .

Normal laws of supply in demand would have led me to guess that when “enough” girls had been aborted, the ones that survived to birth would eventually become “more valuable” than men.

very very sad. u would have thought given their own ation of going across the country to buy a bride, intrepret sex slave, they would have thought better than to have killed her. but when ur an idiot and view people as property like cows and chickens and goats, what can one expect.

i dont remember where i saw this, probably pbs somewheres, but i recall there being a trade also from nepal into india as well. same story,parents poverty stricken, girls, barely into puberty, being sold. many times it seems they are being 'bought' as wives, when really they agents or persons are actually vending them to brothels.

and sadly, in the same report they showed similar things going on on other parts of s.e. asia as well..

maybe the UN should stop holding up traffic on the streets of nyc by having their stupeed conferences that dont achieve squat and do somehting about these sorts of things...

good post abhi.

abortions of baby girls have become so common that the shortage of women is severe

Again, I see a time lag not being accounted for here - guess what is meant to be said is that due to lots of abortions of baby girls 20+ years ago, there is a severe shortage of marriable women now.

this is a disaster in the making for punjab and haryana. and to think aids was the big issue.

@xfile #2
attitudes may not change so fast. the issue is that parents prefered boys for 2 reasons: (i) from a farming point of view, (ii) brides go to live with their in-laws, hence they are seen as children of a different family. the first may have gone, but the second reason is still in force. sooner or later, ppl from other parts of the country will wise up. if that happens, your guess is as good as mine abt what can happen.

i cannot imagine what the parents of tripla must have to go through.

the first thing that must be done is to make sure the rest of india does not go the way of punjab and haryana. the mantra is the same, educate ppl about how girls can stand up on their own, how they can support their parents as well as (or in my opinion better) than boys, and now maybe with the story of punjab and haryana as a threat. if that doesn't work, i don't know what will.

This is SO frustrating. It actually makes perfect sense to me, though. If women were valued differently, Abhi, maybe your supply-demand idea would make sense. In my mind, though, it seems like women have already been commodified (female fetocide because females are just too expensive), and when the supply of this commodity dwindles, only the monetary value increases, but not necessarily their societal value. Does that make sense?

There is a v. creepy movie, Matrubhoomi, that is actually disturbingly close to the true story you describe above. Netflix has it (Netflix!). I'm sure I've mentioned this movie before (I couldn't stop talking about it after I watched it) but it's pretty powerful.

on the same note, there is not much point in sitting around and sobbing abt this. it is important to do anything one can to make ppl---i mean desis here, i have no patience for lectures---appreciate the magnitude of this problem. it is easier than you think, sign up for asha, or any number of organizations that help educate kids, and write to them. they are the ones you must reach.

I'm sorry -- here's a link to Matrubhoomi, and here's a review of it.

Funnily enough it looks none of the Indian newspaper carried this story.Only The Independant and New Zealand Herald has this story by Justin Huggler.Is there something missing with the Indian media ?

You can also watch Matrubhoomi (the movie that Rupa mentioned) here : http://bwcinema.com/moviedetails.aspx?id=187

on the same note, there is not much point in sitting around and sobbing abt this. it is important to do anything one can to make ppl---i mean desis here, i have no patience for lectures---appreciate the magnitude of this problem. it is easier than you think, sign up for asha, or any number of organizations that help educate kids, and write to them. they are the ones you must reach.

By no patience for lectures do you mean First World feminism- "Oh those poor women in India" type of bs?

Also, awile back when I was looking for South Asian NGOs to work with, I had my grandfather see what he could find on his trip to India (he's friends with profs at several Indian universities) he came back with tales of NGOs gone awry as soon as they get some money. I don't know how much we can do from here through NGOs because it would most likely come down to the patronage system, and that's not necessarily a transparent process.

Here's one organization that's trying to make a change in the villages.

From the link:

" The report said that dowry, where traditionally a bride's father had to bestow riches on a groom to secure a marriage, has completely disappeared from many parts of the state."

One can argue, that reverse dowry has already begun in a way: Again from the link

"There are no girls. If there is one in a house, the father is like a king. He can demand anything,"

In India marraige is a business deal. So laws of supply and demand are definately going to matter.

Does anyone know how pervasive the problem is? I've read many stories on this topic and they always seem to take place up north. Is that because the problem is localized there or because the no one has examined the extend of the problem in the south?

more food for thought.

A donkey is like a housewife ... In fact, the donkey is a shade better, for while the housewife may sometimes complain and walk off to her parents' home, you'll never catch the donkey being disloyal to his master,

it's easy to be misrepresented and misunderstood on an open, impersonal forum like this. i'll clarify post #15.

The writer probably justified himself by focusing on the "loyalty" in the sense of "obedience". In that, any beast is probably more loyal than any human being, because the animal has no will of its own. So the statement is logically true superficially... The flaw in the argument is that the relationship between a husband and a wife is equated to that between the master and a slave/beast with no free will, and that is really disturbing in that this is unspoken and an axiom in the state of human relationships in the desert state.

Abhi: I believe a number of people have also wishfully (and very wrongly in my opinion) thought that fewer girls would result in them becoming more "valued" rather than "valuable". However, when you look at women's lives in strongly patriarchal societies such as in the Punjab, Haryana, and Rajasthan, it is and has always been about women being a commodity. When the numbers starting coming out 15 years on these 3 states, there was furious debate among feminists (ngo, non-ngo, concerned citizens) and the general public and both sides were firmly split on the commodity versus valued debate. No guesses where each side belonged.

In fact, my sister (an anthropologist) and I had a huge letter argument (the days before the Internet) in the India Currents with a moron in the SF Bay Area who spouted rubbish about Darwin's selection, women becoming valued, and their price rising as a result of the shortage (I still have copies of the correspondence).

Trhoughout the 90s, my mother was the principal of a well-known private school in Jalandhar (the heart of the Punjab)...extremely expensive and the kids all belonged to uppermiddle class families. The ratio of boys to girls in this school starting at age 3 to age 8 was 20 boys to 5 girls!!!!!!

Sometimes, I despair of my own people.

sp

A donkey is like a housewife ... In fact, the donkey is a shade better, for while the housewife may sometimes complain and walk off to her parents' home, you'll never catch the donkey being disloyal to his master

Unfortunately, this sounds to me like a joke taken out of context. The article did not mention anything about that either...

Frustrating as it is, I guess these things will not change all of a sudden, but has to percolate from urban to rural areas. Hopefully with the spread of education and a greater number of female role models, plus some hard campaigning by Govt/NGOs, this trend maybe checked. The recent statistics about reduction in AIDS infections does provide some hope.

Tripla was a victim of the common practice in India of aborting baby girls because parents only want boys. Although she was born and lived into early adulthood, it was the abortions that caused her death. In the villages of Haryana, just outside Delhi, abortions of baby girls have become so common that the shortage of women is severe. Unable to find wives locally, the men have resorted to buying women from the poorer parts of India. Just 25 miles from the glitzy new shopping malls and apartment complexes of Delhi is a slave market for women.

This above sentence really rubbed me the wrong way. I have a real problem with this. It's highly possible that these people were in the early 20s at best or maybe even mid to upper 20s. The article implies that sex selection that has come into light and apparently more rampant in the past 10 - 15 years or so is what has caused this problem. Bullshyt. I feel like everything that is wrong in India these days gets blamed on feoticide. It's almost become fashionable. No one seems to find a solution to the actual problem....dowry and being able to afford a girl child in poor families. How is this any different then the 3.5 million babies that get aborted in the United States every year for various reasons including "inability to take care of the child financially and emotionally".

I'm not trying to distract from the current discussion by bringing the "in the US" propoganda but western media is getting irritating lately by making it seem like people are induling in this for sheer pleasure. They are aborting for the same reasons the west is aborting babies. How is it different?

It would seem simple that supply and demand will reverse soon enough to make this problem go away. Unfortunately two wrongs don't make a right and where women are treated like property and the attitudes towards women as liability don't change it won't matter how few of them are around. It's not going to suddenly gain them respect. If anything these type of cases of wifesharing will become more common.

No one seems to address the root causes of these problems. Lets punish the doctors who perform the abortions because they apparently are the problem. All this does is creates a black market for these type of abortions, more backalley abortions and deaths.

Cases like these make the anti-abortion right wing nutjobs look like saints.

@sriram, #14
statistically the problem is worst in punjab, haryana and rajasthan. these states ahve ridiculously low numbers of women to men, less than 850f/1000m.

it is not as if the problem is not there in the south. we have an all india average of 920f/1000m, which is well below the 1000+f/1000m. you should have 1000+ women to 1000 men since women live longer, but it is not clear the numbers in the rest of the country mean foeticide.

kerala is the only state to have 1000+f/1000 males. does anyone know why india traditionally has had

JoAT,

As has been discussed previously on other related threads on SM, the problem of Indian female foeticide isn't confined purely to the poor. It also occurs in wealthier, educated groups. So people in India are not necessarily engaging in this practice "for the same reasons the West aborts babies".

The female:male ratio disparity in some parts of India and the reasons behind it (and the consequences) were also recently discussed on the BBC News (on television, not just their website) here in the UK, so it's certainly gaining a higher profile here.

As has been discussed previously on other related threads on SM, the problem of Indian female foeticide isn't confined purely to the poor. It also occurs in wealthier, educated groups. So people in India are not necessarily engaging in this practice "for the same reasons the West aborts babies".

So where are these cases of the wealthier? Why are always the poor and uneducated farmer classes being exposed if they aren't the only ones indulging in this? They are justified for all intents and purposes in doing what they are doing right? If the wealthy class isn't justified in their actions why does no one talk about them or make examples of them?

I'm not directing these questions at you just throwing them out there. I feel like we continually tend to get the 'land of snakecharmers and rampant feoticides' version from media and it always is laced with the "this is disgusting" tone of voice. I was really disappointed with even NPR recently having a discussion about this.

Statewise sex ratios from the 2001 census -> http://www.censusindia.net/results/provindia1.html.

Sorry the html thingy not working for me.

@shruti,
yes, i meant ppl who will gleefully bring this up at every conversation from the second they know your name, but will not lift a finger to help solve anything. i am not sure abt all feminists, but i think we are on the same page.

@gtf, thanks!

@shriram,
appears that most of the south has decent, not good though, 960+ ratios. turns out maharashtra is the only laggard south of the vindhyas with 922.

the worst offenders are delhi, j&k, punjab, haryana and goddamit UP. UP is terrible news, it accounts for a fifth of the population.

so my question that i didn't complete---why do we have

ok i am not sure who is to blame for it, but i have been cut off twice.

what i asked in both comments wsa this: why is it that

i give up. 3 attempts, the same question is cut off.

Does anyone know how pervasive the problem is? I've read many stories on this topic and they always seem to take place up north.

@anuj, you may or may not be right. but what i do know is that there is a good chance your comment will carry this discussion to manu again. let us agree not to waste time on that idiot.

It's self-deluding to reduce this problem to lack of money for dowries and other economic factors. Every one of us knows Indian families, many of them living in the West for decades, which favour their sons over their daughters. Well-educated, middle-class women in India are still expected to place their needs and rights behind those of their brothers and husbands. Women are not valued in Indian culture. Period. The problem is cultural and not economic, and the sooner we stop lying about it the better.

Anuj's comments: When bride burning was all over the news, there was a significantly higher reporting from north of the vindhyas. When eve teasing was rampant, it was north of the vindhyas again.
I know there is plenty of anti-woman/bahu behaviour in the south but it doesn't seem to take the extremes seen in the north. The south certainly seems to treat it's women better (on an aggregated level).

Women are not valued in Indian culture. Period.

Oversimplifications and generalizations have rarely if ever helped solve problems in Indian society. This is as bad as saying "All problems in India are due to British and mughals. period" - complications and nuances cannot be wished away as it has always been a part of what makes indian society diverse and culturally rich.
bottom line (at the risk of restating the obvious)- these are not simple prolems which can be resolved easily.

Abhi writes:
>>Normal laws of supply in demand would have led me to guess that when “enough” girls had been aborted, the ones that survived to birth would eventually become “more valuable” than men. I even imagined a reverse dowery situation as a possibility. Society would finally see the fallacy of its ways when men had nobody to marry

You sound like a young man in a hurry.

Yes, eventually all of these will happen. But before things get better, they will get worse. Much much worse. I am talking of male-female ratios of 1000:200. Gangs of young men lounging around in street corners, ready to grab and rape any female(3 years old, 70 years old... does not matter). Gruesome riots over women. Bus loads of men going to neighbouring towns/states to kidnap women. Gang leaders capturing women and turning them into incubation chambers using selective breeding... to produce female children (year after year) who could be sold off upon puberty. The works...

And once the sickness and depravity of all this wears off (I am thinking 2-3 generations), then things will revert back to normal. Until then, no Government, NGO can do anything significant to improve the situation.

M. Nam

@31, dharma queen,
i wont argue with you since i don't know the families you are talking abt. but there is no reason for gratituous generalization. if you want to think it is the culture that is the problem, you may think so. from what i have seen, parents in middle class (south) india (not indians in america) are no generally different from anyone else--they do love their daughters, they won't wantonly sacrifice their daughters like you hint. of course, they do want to get their daughters married, but hey, they are no different with their sons. but you must understand that most of older middle class india is loathe to put a career in front of family, and this is the reason for their misguided marry-the-kid-off bloodthirstiness. while i spoke of south indian parents since i know more abt there, my point is that culture in the south is not that much different fromt he north.
@32 jayv,
nope, eve-teasing is *extremely* bad in chennai, and in kerala. but not foeticide, i agree.

statistically the problem is worst in punjab, haryana and rajasthan. these states ahve ridiculously low numbers of women to men, less than 850f/1000m.

it is not as if the problem is not there in the south. we have an all india average of 920f/1000m, which is well below the 1000+f/1000m. you should have 1000+ women to 1000 men since women live longer, but it is not clear the numbers in the rest of the country mean foeticide.

Here are some standard facts for the world. link

I think it's a common misconception to believe that the ratio should be 1:1. It is almost never the case. The average is 100 females to 106 males for almost the whole world. On an average more boys are born then girls, this has been the natural case of evolution for a long time. At an older age male female ratio reverses because women outlive men.

In the last decade there have been many studies that have outlined all the different factors that naturally occur or have occured with time and post industrial development that affect the male/female ratio including and not limited to medications people take and environmental factors and a huge study about people affected with Hep B producing male children vs female children.

So 920/1000 for a country like India (where sex selection is prevalant is not really such a bad thing. When it starts dipping below 800 is when it gets freaky.

The solution is obviously complex, but I don't see how the problem itself is 'nuanced'. Where is the nuance in a middle-class educated Indian woman aborting her female fetus because she wants boys? Where is the nuance in widows being regarded as a 'curse'? Where is the nuance in marital rape still not being recognized as a crime in India? Where is the nuance in divorced women being stigmatized as 'promiscuous'? Indian women are second-class citizens in their own land.

@joat,
that clears up some things. 100 girls to 106 boys would be 943, so given the slightly higher lifespan of women, 960 may be a reasonable number. but most of south has 960+, there is no reason why the north cannot have that ratio. also, the 985 in TN may be, like you said better healthcare since they have been proud of it for over a couple of decades now. they may get close to 1:1 by the next census going by pondicherry's experience, while the other southern states may catch up a little later.
so this is the conclusion i take, assuming the south has limited foeticide problems, a number below 960 in india indicates sex selection is going on.

#31 dharma queen

Women are not valued in Indian culture. Period. The problem is cultural and not economic, and the sooner we stop lying about it the better.

Sweeping generalization aside, I have to agree. The problem is cultural. I don't think it is uniquely indian though.

#35 bytewords

I only have old info from my times in both places.

The south is certainly more conservative than the north but the impression I have is that if you watch what you wear* you are less likely to attract attention.

*Yes, yes I know....we should be able to wear what we want...

For those interested in male/female sex ratio and abortions, please read and analyze an excellent comment made by MD.

If abortion is not akin to murder, then why does the selection of a fetus with certain characteristics bother us?

Jayv, #39,

eve teasing in chennai and kerala is not altogether new. but i didn't mean to say the south was more conservative, i think it is the wrong impression most people have. they dress very much more conservatively, yes.
but in my limited experience, delhi would be a backward village in terms of attitude compared with most south indian cities. the point i am trying to make here is that it is really wrong to look at the attitude to dress that people have and jump to conclusions.

Here in the New Punjab[Vancouver, Canada] this abortion of unborn girls in the punjabi community is a major problem. I knew of several familes who have done this sick thing just so they can have there 'jatt' son.

I have also heard in California with the U.S highest punjabi population is a major problem.

It's so sad that my culture[the punjabi culture] treats girls like there less then boys.

The link that Joat (#36) provided is not working now. Did we really take down the cia.gov site? :-) (like Slashdot effect?)

Also, I will be interested in knowing the source of the numbers for TN (#38 - byteword), that looks quite healthy. I know for a fact that female infanticide was(is?) quite common in some rural areas of TN. Note that abortion was never common - probably because it wasn't cheap enough. But all other problems - dowry, eve-teasing etc are still common and I don't think it is coming down. Very sensible (and properly middle-class) relatives of mine still think in terms of "Oh who will marry her if she studies too much? Let her go to a arts college."

#41 bytewords: My point was that women in the south seem to be treated better than they are in the north. The eve teasing rates were not the the primary point of my post. Just an incidental observation to add flavor.

As the sex ratios stats suggest, the south does treat them better.

If abortion is not akin to murder, then why does the selection of a fetus with certain characteristics bother us?

Because certain characteristics are pathological. XX Chromosome (or other non-pathological genomic criteria -- ie eye color etc) is not a disease process. I think we've been over this territory.

The link that Joat (#36) provided is not working now. Did we really take down the cia.gov site? :-)

Here it is incase you want to copy paste instead of the link :-)
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/fields/2018.html

Very sensible (and properly middle-class) relatives of mine still think in terms of "Oh who will marry her if she studies too much? Let her go to a arts college."

We had some relatives from India visiting and they were all joking with my brother..'Oh just tell us what kind of girl you want we'll produce one.' To which my brother said "Oh she'd better be smarter then me cause I'm a dunst." He was kidding or perhaps not ;-) and the aunty goes "Oh you don't want to marry a girl smarter then you, she'll run away and cause you trouble." Yes a woman said that.

These attitudes stink and I've seen them too often in people. Fortunately for me we are 14 girls and 3 boys on my mom's side of the family and all the girls are overachievers and the parents regularly brag about this. This attitude runs deep and is at the core of the general disrespect women encounter culturally.

1) um, can some do a quick def. of "eve" teasing, sorry, heard it a lot here, never knowen the meaning

2) some people do believe abortion is murder, i certainly do, so abortion to incrase chance of getting male heirs vs. abortions because pregnancy just wont fit into schedule of school/career/pressure/whim is no different... ofcourse, imo

3) 1000's of years of history tradion and culture where the female is regarded as inferior, though she bears the next generation, and for the most part, does all other essential household stuff also, and oh yes, raises th ekids and goes to pta meetings, or in my case, principals office when said kid in trouble... wont disappear overnight,without, tough legislation, and moreover, tougher enforcement... most places have legislation, most places enforce sort of casually, whimsically if u will...

4) ime, even modern men with foreign education and careers and loud voice proclaiming how they are progressive (though why it would be considered upper echelon thinking to think women have different but important roles??!!? bewilders me) still deeply harbour we are better sentiments towards women.

@43, eswaran,
my source is the usual census data that is provided. tn does extremely well on almost all social indicators, and during my 4 year stay there, no govt gets tired of pointing it out. whether or not it is their accomplishment.
i concur that infanticide used to be prevalent, that was my impression sometime back. apparently it is no longer the case. in this case it might have been economic.
re: your relatives, their bias may be speaking through them, that is they way they have been brought up. but tell me, how many will insist on standing in their daughter's way? i never claimed middle class south was not biased in the last generation, i did say they are marriage-thirsty. just that they will not be active perpetrators for their kids. stupidity yes, mistreatement unlikely. but if your point is that there are still (many) issues to be resolved, don't get me wrong--i am not contesting that. no way.
i brought up this point because dq claims that the problem is our culture. cpi-m has been speaking like dq for years, just look at the pathetic numbers in bengal where they have been in power for 30 years. and don't give me kerala, it is not cpi-m's accomplishment, it is the matriarchal traditions (admittedly not in the whole population). if one thinks it is the "backward hindoos" responsible, therefore chuck the culture you will be fine, (s)he is just barking up the wrong tree.
@44 jayv,
point taken. i just wanted to say taht it is not as if all is hunky dory in the south. doing better than north is not the point, one must do well on an absolute scale.

um, can some do a quick def. of "eve" teasing, sorry, heard it a lot here, never knowen the meaning

Here you go!
It's sexual harrassment generally way beyond silly passing comments.

j.o.a.t., s'what i expected, but thought best to ask.

cheers

It is posts like these that make Sepia look like a third rate, sleazy tabloid. I subscribe to over 400 newsfeeds on India via an RSS aggregator & I see nothing to indicate that this "story" is being carried by even one Indian news outlet. Only links I see belong to western media outlets like the Independent.

I guess blogs too need hits - just like tabloids.

I guess blogs too need hits - just like tabloids.

Sanjay, why the hell would we care about what is being run by Indian news outlets? I wasn't even aware that there was such a thing (at least one worthy of any respect). Please, I'd be honored if you removed us from your RSS aggregator. Then tell a friend.

that's a beautiful sentiment, sanjay. thanks for sharing.

sanjay:

ah well, indian media is not doing stories like these, so it must not be true...

and wow, u read 400, again, 400, newsfeeds, and wow, they all suck...

i dont recall sepia claiming to be the bbc of american-deshis, and if it were, many of us would then stick to bbc. its precisely posts like these together with a wiiide assortment of various subjects and interests that has kept me coming back, addictively..i am sad to admit...

and third rate, sleazy tabloid's dont run these sorts of things, unfortuanately, it has to be foreign media, or media run by deshis abroad, as we seem to have become calous to the plight of our own in our own countries...

No one is blaming the 'backward Hindoos' or saying 'chuck the culture', bytewords. But there is a pervasive mode of thinking in India that women are weak, silly, emotional, dependent, and all-round less worthy beings than men. I encounter this over and over again when I am over there (to a much greater extent than here, though yes, it is here too), and I am sure other women in this conversation can corroborate this.

Abhi

The honor is all mine. I insist. As for friends, I hadn't recommended Sepia to anyone yet, even enemies.

Sanjay

"Please, I'd be honored if you removed us from your RSS aggregator. Then tell a friend."

Why is there so much anger, Abhi, if someone pointed out something that you don't like. I don't think it is a tabloid piece at all - but people have different perspectives.

dude,

I removed the wow factor & there was nothing left in your eloquent post. Although your gallant & faithful defence of the jaati is duly noted.

Please do post again when you're off the ground :-)

sanjay

sanjay,

would you do us the honor of sharing your thoughts on the substance of the topics discussed in the post? it's clear that you are unhappy with the messengers (sepia, western media, abhi, dude, et al). but what about the content?

i am calling shenanigans on sanjay

commenting on blogs wouldnt be the same if it wasnt for trollers and flamers.. actually, yes it would, and it would be a lot better.

Since Sanjay is probably off sulking somewhere, I'll answer on behalf of all the Sanjays out there, with help from comments I've heard from some of my own relatives:

"The post is the work of persons brainwashed by American media, self-hating 'twinkies', who cannot see that in India Woman is the eternal Devi, worshipped and protected by males, and that events like the one described, if they happen, are exceptional and motivated by rural poverty and despair."

sanjay, abhi, dude and siddhartha,

1. justin huggler was in all probability not the journalist who picked up on tripla's story.
2. this story was carried by indian news sites (IANS, a news wire in india seems to have got the story first), but a month back. independent probably got tipped off from the story IANS had.
of course no acknowledgements necessary. after all (abhi, dude, and siddhartha) which indian tabloid would carry stories like this ahead of the great independent with no reporters in india? indian sites seem to be more honest, here is a citation to IANS by another indian site on mar 11 with the above story.
3. the reason sanjay did not pick it up was because the story is old. apparently not because his 400 feeds are crappy.
abhi, dude and siddhartha: do you have any idea how many indian journalists are seriously looking not only to report stories, but to get involved and help out? your "west is best" attitude is a slap in the face to them.
having said that, it is not important who wrote the news. even if this piece were not true, we all know female foeticide is a big problem. that is what is important.

d.q., did u say skulking.. oh, sulking.. oh, thats different then...

bytewords,

abhi, dude and siddhartha: do you have any idea how many indian journalists are seriously looking not only to report stories, but to get involved and help out? your "west is best" attitude is a slap in the face to them.

you are creating slaps in the face where they do not exist. the capacity for seriousness in the indian media is not in question. where did i ever say "west is best"? nonsense. the indian press is a free and professional press with high quality and low quality journalism in probably the same general distribution as is found in other free professional press corps.

the question of professional ethics of foreign correspondents and their use of local freelancers, sources, and previously published material, is a very pertinent one. these practices are often exploitative, sometimes intentionally and sometimes out of ignorance. i appreciate you giving us some background on the particular item under discussion here. if anything, it should put sanjay to rest that the item was, in fact, reported in the indian media, even if it didn't make it onto any of his RSS feeds.

please do not turn this discussion into some kind of "india versus the west" standoff. it isn't. if it reassures you to hear it from me: indian journalism is generally solid and sincere, and the west is not the best. now, let's get back to the topic.

peace

siddhartha m

This topic has been examined in depth by dr veena oldenburg of columbia in her book "Dowry Murders". She set the standard, academically & otherwise, for anyone seriously interested in this topic - beyond the sensationalist tabloid level, of course.

sanjay

in keeping with what bytewords said, a search for this news item shows it was either featured or picked up by many Indian news sites around mid-March. and when they're not salivating over celebrities or sonia gandhi or featuring the umpteenth article on the vulgar tastes of the westernised nouveau riche of india, publications like india today, outlook and other magazines (and regional language publications) actually do try to feature these types of stories that neither seek to do a westernised "drain inspector's" report of social problems in india nor gloss over them.

sanjay,

thanks for the response. but what insight does dr oldenburg's work shed on the topic at hand? sincere question. or to put it as bytewords did just now:

having said that, it is not important who wrote the news. even if this piece were not true, we all know female foeticide is a big problem. that is what is important.

there was at some point on this thread an interesting discussion of the dynamics behind female foeticide, and more interestingly still, of the social consequences of the scarcity of women that has resulted.

moornam, with whom i usually don't agree, put it in stirring fashion in comment #34:

But before things get better, they will get worse. Much much worse. I am talking of male-female ratios of 1000:200. Gangs of young men lounging around in street corners, ready to grab and rape any female(3 years old, 70 years old... does not matter). Gruesome riots over women. Bus loads of men going to neighbouring towns/states to kidnap women. Gang leaders capturing women and turning them into incubation chambers using selective breeding... to produce female children (year after year) who could be sold off upon puberty. The works...

And once the sickness and depravity of all this wears off (I am thinking 2-3 generations), then things will revert back to normal. Until then, no Government, NGO can do anything significant to improve the situation.

i think moornam makes a very convincing case, at least in describing a worst-case scenario. other than objecting to what others are saying here and/or directing us to academic sources without giving us a courtesy summary of their significance, what do you -- sanjay -- think of the scenario moornam laid out?

peace

dharma queen,

Now that you've publicly trashed your own relatives, knocked down a couple of strawmen, won everyone's deepest admiration etc., perhaps you can now focus on what I would really have said :-)

"Go & read "Dowry Murders" & then we're ready for a discussion on this topic."

i think on a day to day level, this issue, at least in Punjab is related to all those little every-day attitudes which betray chauvanism that men are better than women. Those everday little social graces that reveal a deeper prejudice

bytewords:

what? um, i know i am often forgetful, but i dont recall saying anything about the indian press, or its quality, i was more making jest of the poster who called this for some incomprehensible reason a tabloid posting..

um, where u got the rest from is beyond me also. to me it sounded simply like trolling, as it didnt directly relate to the post, or in reference to another comment.

s'all. no need to jump in and say we are bringing in this west v. east thing, when infact, u just did that urself.

here is an asia society discussion between veena talwar oldenburg, of CUNY, and anupama rao, of barnard college, on oldenburg's book "dowry murder" which sanjay asks that we read as a prerequisite to further conversation.

i'd be interested in learning more about the way oldenburg's argument applies to the spread/extent of female foeticide today. it doesn't seem to be a direct corollary. leaving aside that the theory is far from universally accepted in the first place. it would be much easier to discuss this substantively, rather than have to resort to the degree of acceptance or controversy of the theory as a yardstick, if someone actually laid out the case.

peace

"Go & read "Dowry Murders" & then we're ready for a discussion on this topic."

Question at large: Why do some commenters refuse to engage in discussion on a relevant post unless somebody at odds goes off and reads some or other book that they think is the ultimate word on the topic? Although its great to hear book recommendations, last time I checked this isnt a book club, information isnt perfect, and that's the whole purpose of discussions such as these: to generate ideas and sharing of informed (or otherwise) opinions and build bridges of dialogue, while of course having some fun on the side...I, too, think that if you havent got anything constructive to say on the topic at hand, then don't dismiss others' efforts to try to make sense of it....

And MoorNam: I think your situation is highly plausible with the way things have been going with dwindling numbers of women in parts of north india..I'm not sure how much of a serious situation this is in in south india, since I'm ethnically from kerala and there's a general sense of well-being for women who live there in many capacities. Definetely a Margaret Atwood-esque dystopian scenario!

MoorNam's post scares and depresses the shit out of me.

MoorNam's scenario is terrifying not only for what it suggests - but the auxilliary effects of it all - a rise in right wing politics as a mangled and hyper masculine and sexually and socially deformed society seeks outlets for this energy - expect the fundoos of all religions and ethnicities to have a field day exploiting all that rage.

The future looks scary.

siddhartha m

Let's just address one, single point. If the shortage of females were as big an issue as you and moornam seem to think, then why aren't the following societies crashing? This is UN data expressed in males/ 100 females

United Arab Emirates - 195
Bahrain - 135
Saudi Arabia - 115
Oman - 113
Samoa - 111
Papua New Guinea - 109
Jordan - 108
Libyan - 108
Afghanistan - 107
Bangladesh - 106
China - 106
India - 106

There is no doubt that sex-selective abortions do happen in India today; that before the availability of "safer" abortion methods, female foeticide was indeed happening in certain northern communities of India.

However, this is a far cry from the doomsday, tabloid-y scenarios painted by many for India as a whole.

Sanjay,

You may not have noticed that this is a BLOG, not the spring session of Indian Women's Studies 101. Inferring from your comments, no one should state their opinion on a news item without having read various books on the subject matter...

BTW - I thought SM was below your dignity? Why are you still here?

b. numnums:

Question at large: Why do some commenters refuse to engage in discussion on a relevant post unless somebody at odds goes off and reads some or other book that they think is the ultimate word on the topic?

go read these books and then we can discuss your question.

I have the perfect solution....since America makes it a practice to send their male youth off to wars to fight for oil rights, getting them killed, leaving a male shortage in America....so, that being said, we can plan arranged marriages for all those "femaleless" Indian males with our lonely American women!

What? You say that won't work? American women aren't going to make chapatis properly, don't know how to wear a proper saree, won't call her husband, just husband? Ack!

Well, this situation kindof reminds me of China and Japan....where are they getting their brides?

Ah, what to do?

dude, #70. last time i will respond on the alternate thread here. must i remind you of #54? in particular:

and third rate, sleazy tabloid's dont run these sorts of things, unfortuanately, it has to be foreign media, or media run by deshis abroad, as we seem to have become calous to the plight of our own in our own countries...

i don't care what you meant. i go by what you write. it seems to me you think that if it is not "foreign media, or media run by deshis abroad", it is "third rate, sleazy tabloid" and will be "calous (sic)". but i wont respond further on this pointless thread.

but as we all will agree, let us get back to the topic. just got p1ssed off at the attack on the #70 comment. sorry abt that to every one else.

siddhartha,

much appreciated :) I've added monday's trolls to my wishlist to help counter those beginning-of-the-week-blues ;)

Sanjay - thanks for showing your true colours. Clearly the ethics of sex selection, and its expression of a pervasive mysogyny, are not disturbing to you at all - only the possibility of a MoorNamian (sorry, MoorNam) scenario is. Most of the countries on your list are hardly models of good societies, and in most cases, strangely enough, are reputed to be very difficult for women to live in.

Feel free to respond to this with a personal attack. I'm female.

#75, sanjay
uae may not be a good example. the numbers will be inflated because of the large number of migrants for work, who will be males. similar case maybe in some other countries on your list.

but you can't mean that the society is not breaking down. is tripla's murder not enough? to me that is more tragic than i can let happen. there are several stories like this in china too.

sanjay,

why aren't the following societies crashing? This is UN data expressed in males/ 100 females

United Arab Emirates - 195
Bahrain - 135
Saudi Arabia - 115
Oman - 113
Samoa - 111
Papua New Guinea - 109
Jordan - 108
Libyan - 108
Afghanistan - 107
Bangladesh - 106
China - 106
India - 106

the table you linked to is country populations with gender ratios. not live births by gender. come back with live births by gender and then we can talk.

as for your table: all the countries with more than 110 men per 100 women are heavy importers of migrant labor, the vast majority of which is male.

many of the countries with 101-110 men per 100 women are also migrant labor hubs, like Cote d'Ivoire for example.

other countries with 101-110 are ones where similar male preference is exercised (like... gasp... some of those icky muslim countries) [SARCASM, y'all]

take all that away and india is sticking out there at 106, followed by china at 104.

not a pretty picture, and certainly enough for moornam's scenario to give one pause.

peace

United Arab Emirates - 195 Bahrain - 135 Saudi Arabia - 115 Oman - 113 Samoa - 111 Papua New Guinea - 109 Jordan - 108 Libyan - 108 Afghanistan - 107

Uhhh...I think a more valuable statistic as a counterpoint to these provided above, would be the MAN to NUMBER OF WIVES ratio in these countries...

dharma queen,

I have temporarily suspended my dignity :-) Just curious though about this seeming eagerness to gossip behind my back :-(

Btw, you infer incorrectly from my comments. I said read the book before we can have a discussion. Expressing your opinion unilaterally is different from having a discussion. The latter usually requires at least two people communicating with each other.

bytewords:

it seems to me you think that if it is not "foreign media, or media run by deshis abroad", it is "third rate, sleazy tabloid"

wth are u talkign about??? who said anythign about asian media being tabloid, i was talking/responding to previous comment that said this post was tabloid, and i said, tabloid media doesnt carry these sorts of things.. i.e. nat'l enquirer etc, people who carry alien abduction and elvis sightings...

dude, drink a cup of joe or something.. get pissy, fine, but atleast get pissy at the right thing/person/comment

fyi, family has been in deshi media for 2 generations, .. on the contrary i often bitch about the lacklustre and superciality of cnn etc..

wtf dude.. get ur shi* straight...

birdie numnums:

hmm, exactly the reason i come on this board again and again, to read not only the posts, but other views, both agrreable to my perspective, and also, disagreeable. disagreeables are harder to take, but one does not learn anything or grow if one is only getting agrreable comments and platitudes all the time.

siddhartha m

the table you linked to is country populations with gender ratios. not live births by gender. come back with live births by gender and then we can talk.

For moornam's scenario to be valid, it is gender ratios that matter, not live births by gender. People simply do not get married immediately following birth, such is my experience. I do, however, agree with your point about migrant labour being a plausible explanation for the gender imbalances of these middle eastern societies. Having seen how closed societies make up for people shortages, why do we fall for alarmist, end of the world projections a la moornam's? A much more plausible scenario for an open society like India is that desi men will end up marrying foreign women. My understanding is that there are more than a dozen Eastern Europe countries with a desperate shortage of men.

Migrant labour of a different kind, eh. Sorry, couldn't resist ;-)

#74 jay singh,

i agree. as any school teacher will attest, group dynamics change with the gender ratio. i believe we are only sane at near equal gender ratios. swing far from it, all bets are off.

does anyone have past census data? it will be interesting to see trends in the gender ratios. maybe useful to pinpoint places that are deteriorating the most.

Sanjay - no problem, then! Forget the whole discussion! Desi men can get what they need in Eastern Europe - hell who ever raised this trivial issue in the first place??

hmm, exactly the reason i come on this board again and again, to read not only the posts, but other views, both agrreable to my perspective, and also, disagreeable. disagreeables are harder to take, but one does not learn anything or grow if one is only getting agrreable comments and platitudes all the time.

dude, I'm not sure exactly where I gave you the above impression? Perhaps you were extrapolating? But that is marshy territory...It was not my intention to ever make any sort of statement that I only like reading agreeable statements - that makes no sense to me.

birdie numnums, nope, i was complementing and agrreing with u, and stating why i like coming to these boards.

u got me wrong. the last sentence refers to me, i.e. who likes to hear disagrreable things to ones own opinion, but, thats where sometimes we grow and learn, again, refering to myself, not to u.

misunderstanding clarified - thanks :)

ok dharma queen, i concede you have shown me proof of #55 to an extent on this thread itself. well, what can be done :).

Sanjay - the TOI did run a few stories on this case. Do a search in Google News for 'Ajmer Singh'.
I had this dilemma on Monday. Saw the story, got kinda depressed, and then started blogging about it and then stopped.

Isn't it sad that so many stories of female opression come out of the sub-continent? I swear one could have a busy blog just based on that. Every other day on PP we run stories on reports out of India/Pak/Bangladesh etc about something bad happening to our women.

After a while you think: what's the point of doing another story on the same subject? It's depressing man.... really depressing.

dharma queen,

The problem is very serious in many parts of northern India & the only issue is how to solve it. The people charged to enforce the law - the cops - very likely belong to those very communities/ castes etc that practise it the most. They have absolutely no interest, incentive or motivation to enforce the law. Not because they are morons but because they are perhaps well aware that, if not for the safer option of abortions, people would return to female foeticide (I mean real murder).

Oldenburg's book helps us to understand issues in its deeper, historical context. This prevents us from falling prey to alarmist, end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it scenarios & placing our faith on quick fixes.

Recently, several religious leaders have taken up the cause & this will likely produce more results than any laws GoI can pass.

Sunny,

One of the things I've learnt is to distinguish between symptoms & underlying causes. The same underlying cause finds expression in different societies according to the cultural norms of the host society. A land dispute will manifest itself along caste lines in bihar and along race faultlines in Zimbabwe. The trick is to understand & resolve the underlying land dispute, rather than breast beating about casteism/ racism.

I don't mind admitting that veena oldenburg's book was an eyeopener for me. It showed me that one of the great achievements of modern life - land redistribution to landless peasants, which gave millions of landless peasants property rights, dignity & self sufficiency, was also one of the great upheavals & curses of modern times.

Prof. Abdel-Wahab El-Messiri of Ain Shams University, Egypt makes a passing reference to "the famines that afflicted India as a result of the implementation of modern Western property laws".

Oldenburg makes a similar point in the asia society interview link provided by siddhartha m when she says

These reasons for assigning land as property completely transformed the world. This was the deepest social revolution that colonialism ever performed. They transformed the relations of people to the land on which they lived. Now you had owners, now you had "haves" and "have-nots." In the pre-colonial period, you had rights in land and the right was of use of the fruit of the land. But you did not buy or sell it. The way people controlled the land was to defend it. And taxes were paid to support the defense of the land.

Given that India is still 70% agrarian, the negative impact of property rights is a good starting point to begin analyzing some of the ills that afflict indian society.

come back with live births by gender and then we can talk.

Siddhartha,

You will never find that data set, not in next 20 years from now. There is no absolutely no (minimal) bookkeeping about birth except in North America and Europe.

Most of theses studies done in India are by using Government of India census data on children @ age 5 and then determining the effect female foeticide by proxy. Therefore, JoAT is saying is also correct and needs to be taken into account. Doing science by proxy is well established but one has to know the basic assumptions. Some studies have been done using upper middle-class hospitals in Chandigarh, etc, and then extrapolated the data. That is fine on a first order but not at all worthy of nit-picking differences between 105/ 106/107 ratio numbers.

Female foeticite is real and serious but do keep the source of data in mind.

Eddie, MD, Bong Breaker (three medical doctors), Expose, and I - we all discussed the whole issue a few months ago along with many, many other SMers - about the fragility of the data.

There are many issues on play: a) Poverty (someone will tell me that even middle class indians do it too, true - a middle class Indian is not a middle class American - they have a very tenous safety net. We all have seen people almost breaking their financial back for weddings), b) Seriously hurtful social practices (Dowry, etc.), c) Poor medical care for girls (schools in villages in India and Africa do not even have bathrooms in schools), and a d) Society that needs some serious changes.

Ideas by Sanjay are not without merit. By the end of the day, whom should I listen: a) a skeptic (or someone I do not fully agree) but has put some thought in their discussion, or b) someone going on some tirade.

Maybe, we need new Raja Ram Mohan Roys. Swami Agnivesh is leading a grass-roots, among many others.

sanjay,

your point from veena's work is very interesting. but---this is definitely a bias i have and if anyone can convince me otherwise, i will be happy---a lot of social sciences, including history is just (well thought out, no doubt) opinion paraded as truths. sometimes, imo the opinion holds just because it is the flavor of the time, or the author being well known, or good writing. to me, the most that sociologists can do is to provide independent opinions, large agreement interpreted as "something is right". which i don't see happening in the case of "land distribution is the cause of trouble". you can disagree with me, i will not contest any argument against what i have said above.

but, no matter how eloquently you disagree, i would hesitate to do anything that defies common sense just because a historian or a sociologist says so. besides there is not much of discussion in economics that i know of re: land distribution being the cause of problems mentioned in this thread.

so for the issue at hand, rather than look into property rights as a root cause, i would take the common sense approach of education. making people aware that a girl child is not a burden, she is just as capable as a boy, and letting them know how bad things can get would be if the foeticide goes on.

Sanjay -

I'm glad you mentioned Veena Oldenberg. I read one of her articles and it was an eye-opener for me too. But according to SM logic, it's been 60 years since the Brits left India why are all these problems not solved. See if you can try and explain that some damage is permanent or the effects of the damage are still unfolding.

I think Moornam got a bit carried away there. People are already taking steps to educate the masses and this is being met with a positive response in many villages. People have begun to realize what a soup they're in. It's the South Delhi types who're going to be left behind while the villages reform.

In India do we value human life, in particular, the life of a fellow indian? No. We do not.

I think that is the main problem today in India.