Cradling a solution?

EAR TO THE GROUND

The government plans to place cradles in every district where women can leave their unwanted girl children. But will the scheme work?

A visit to Kasauli in Himachal Pradesh would please Renuka Chaudhury. It is beautiful. But what might gladden the Women and Child Development Minister even more is the fact that in the villages surrounding the town, women have six to seven daughters each. There is a son too, usually at the very end of the line. Chaudhury, concerned over female foeticide and the declining female population in the country, recently announced cradles in every district to adopt unwanted daughters.

But Kasauli tells a different tale. The women here complain that they are forced to go through labour till a son is born. Of course, the families do not want to eliminate daughters. They just insist on having a son, the women say. "I don't want to go through this so many times. So I went to an astrologer and made offerings at a temple for a son," a woman says.

Another admits to having taken a herb prescribed by her father-in-law to bear a son. Trapped as the women are in someone else's home, they have no choice but to deliver like machines, till a son is born.

Of course, when Chaudhury installs a cradle here, all these women will have the choice of leaving their daughters there. But would they? Would any mother do that? Especially if they knew that the central government has till date opened merely 30,000 crèches in this country for the children of 14 crore working mothers.

A visit to any child welfare committee hearing in Delhi would reveal that most lost children produced before the panel are generally sent to the NGOs as the government has no space to keep them. As for the NGOs, Chaudhury's own ministry has expressed its ignorance about the various organisations which keep children in various states. Would mothers trust such governments with their children?

In Tamil Nadu, cradles were introduced 15 years ago to prevent female infanticide. But, according to a study conducted by the Society for Integrated Rural Development, the government move just prompted the women to opt for female foeticide in place of female infanticide.

Kiran Bedi, an icon for many women, says that probably a social security for all parents, especially mothers, could help rather than cradles. The government will have to invest in reinforcing the image of a woman's worth, she adds.

Chaudhury must surely be nursing a bleeding heart as she reads about daughters being eliminated before they are born. But cradles would send a wrong signal. It would mean an assent for anti-women patriarchy.

The minister herself is a more positive sign for the future of girls in this country, but girls want a chair like hers, not orphanages minded by unknown scrooges.