Addressing "Conference on Gender Based Sex Selection: Implementation challenges" organised by Centre for Social Research, Deputy Chief of Mission of the German Embassy Cord Meier-Klodt said "quick fix solutions" cannot deal with the issue.
"Now you might say I am overstepping my diplomatic neutrality a little bit, but I want to make my point because this is the way I see it...I do have my doubts with regard to quite a few of recent calls for drastic measures and I think you know what I am talking about, which go beyond the existing democratic consensus.
"Such activism may feel good. But it would be comparable of treating the symptoms of the disease instead of treating root cause of the disease and may be even making us forgetting about the root causes," he said.
Remarking that he cannot avoid mentioning the December 16 "horrific" gangrape of the girl in a moving bus on such an occasion, he said there is a need to tackle this issue finally with determination and to find some lasting solutions for making Delhi and India as a whole a safer place for women.
"Yet at the same time what is at stake is another very important challenge. That is not an easy task in light of the horrors we have had to hear and read about every day. But we must not be carried away by emotions," he said in an apparent reference to vociferous demands for death penalty or chemical castration for rapists. MORE