Life as I find it

Arrest after man buries twins alive caught my eye as I read on in horror. While the issues raised by the selective abortion of female foetuses creates a great deal of social concern for the future of India, I think it is worse that newly borns are burried alive after birth. This makes me think that perhaps we as a society, a government are imposing our morals on people who would like to have the choice of gender in their offspring. If banning the testing of sex of infants and terminating female foetuses only mean that these activities are done illegally anyway, if it means that the women undergoing those options may not even have the right to sue for any malpractices they may be enduring because of their act being illegal, if it means that babies are being murdered…… I think that somewhere we are creating rules for how a whole lot of people should have kids. We are not consulting them, their interests, their concerns, or their choice. This is creating far worse problems than the ones it attempts to avoid.

A father who kills his own daughters may be a murderer, but are we doing the daughters that get saved any favours, if this is the amount of hatred they will be facing in life? Do those families really want them? Will they love them and be fair to them, or have a grudge about not having a son instead, for eating up the family resources? Would these parents be expected to raise these girls as healthy, happy citizens anyway? Would they care about their education?

On a different note, I have a feeling that society cures itself over time through the consequences of its own actions. Today, we are facing problems with discrimination against women, harrassment, social unacceptability of a divorce, dowry problems, unacceptability of remarriage for widows, etc. If things continue as they are, society is going to fall short on women in comparison with men. This might just be what the doctor ordered to deal with the other issues.

If women become rarer, they will be valued more. Competition between prospective husbands will ensure an eventual death of the dowry system out of sheer competitive tactics to procure a wife in the first place regardless of money. Women may be respected more. Widows and divorcees may have better chances of acceptance and remarriage through the sheer need of marrigable women. A decrease in the female population will eventually also reflect in a decreased population. Even homosexuality may be more easily accepted out of sheer acclimatization through necessity. I think, this would not really be a bad thing.

Consider a family who wants a male child. They may want it to carry on the “family name”. They may want it for managing the property of a home in the future in an agricultural society. They may want it to ensure “their support” in their old age. They may even want it because they like boys more than girls…… Whatever the reasons are, they are their reasons. They are as important to them, as our vision of respect for women is for us. Who are we to dictate what they should or should not do with regard to their own children? We can influence, but if we force, we are forcing them into something they don’t want for themselves.

I hate the thought of an abortion being done simply because the child is female. I wouldn’t do it. That doesn’t mean that everyone has to be like me.

Consider this family we are speaking of. They want a child. A boy. Ideally, they want only one, because that is what they think they can afford. Great. They get pregnant. They would like to ensure that their child is a boy as planned. They go to some shady sex determination clinic. Their being shady also makes them be careful to stay under the radar. No one can say that the instruments they use or the procedures they follow are safe. This couple is already required to flirt with risk to the mother’s life and health through a need for a technology that is available through clean medical facilities as well, if not banned. Yet, if they want to do it enough, they will do it anyway.

This is for the poor and gullible. Those who can afford it can simply fly out of the country and test all they like. So it cannot be completely stopped anyway. These shady things happen by those with access to information on these illegal facilities. Others will go on to deliver and find out. If it is a boy, Excellent! If it is a girl, she’s lucky if the parents fall in love with her at birth, or the options ahead are far worse - being murdered, or being hated all her life for being female. What right to we as a collective society have to inflict this on them? Is this killing of infants already born preferrable to the hypothetical lives that might be born in the future to those who cannot figure out illegal facilities? I think we are hurting the rights of the parents to avail all available knowledge to make their planned child exactly the way they want it. Abortion is legal in India. So why this selective fuss to condemn those born to hate and violence at an age when they don’t even understand anything at all?

We as a society are bigotted rats. We impose our assessments of what is right and wrong very easily, but what are the factors we should really be considering? Should we be sacrificing female babies to their own parents to follow our dream of equal gender ratios in the “shining India”? What right do we have to prevent the painless termination of an unborn life only to force it to be delivered into a cradle of hate?

If India has less females in the future, so be it. This is what society wanted, this is what it will get. If they find out in the future that they don’t like this scarcity of females and they want more girls to be around, they can allow their female offspring to live exclusively as well, and make their choice. It is not like the massive population of India is suddenly going to go extinct.

As a woman in India, I find that the society is changing a lot in terms of acceptance of women as professionals, as bread-earners in families and as independent thinking individuals. Women have proved themselves as equals in many professions as well as proved themselves even better suited than men in others. The situation for working women is improving fast.

On the other hand, in the typical Indian Society, you find that there are still expectations and assumptions about women that are not so much relevant to their current status, but a clear hangover from out supressive past. This may be more obvious in rural societies, but it is extremely prevalent in urban ones as well.

I am speaking of “running the home” kind of stuff. Regardless of how hard the man and woman of the house work, there are certain areas of the home that are the woman’s province in happy times and her nemesis in not so happy times.

“As the woman of the house, you should….” is a familiar refrain for most women in India. I think, it is high time that we as citizens of modern India took a good hard look at our automatic assumptions and investigated which among these are still applicable today, and which ones we simply need to let go.

Typical situations we see include the woman bringing a cup of hot tea for her man returning from work, or the woman returning home after her husband and heading straight to the kitchen to cook dinner, and so on.

On an average, in any home where women are working, their income is also important to the well-being of the home and the living standards. Where it is not a question of money, it is generally possible to employ someone for the work in the house. So when we speak of a traditional role of a woman being responsible for the efficient running of her home, it is something we need to be aware of as an additional expectation made from her.

The traditional role of a man has been the one of earning the money for the running of the home. This has changed to a great extent. Working women contribute to the expenses of running their homes as well. However, there has been little contribution from men in terms of shouldering some of the responsibilities of women.

One interesting insight I received into this was from a friend. He said, “See, women find the outside world challenging and attractive. They like the freedom it brings to them. So they enter the world. There is no reason for a man to find the women’s traditional role appealing, so he doesn’t. No one has forced the women to step into the man’s role, and no one should force the men to step into a woman’s role”

On the surface, this seems to strike sense. However, the flaw lies in an assumption of curent roles that are the same as traditional roles and that the women are entering “a man’s territory”. This simply doesn’t hold true in most cases today. Women are educated and often have their careers well before they get married and it is as much their right as the man’s work is his. However, the other part, wher ehte men don’t find the house work appealing enough to invest effort in still holds true.

This is something that needs to be taken an honest assessment of. If we abandon the traditional perspective of division of responsibilities inside and outside the home (since it has already been broken in the outside the home area), we come to a situation where the couple are both inhabiting a home and earning and contrubuting toward its running. What we need to find is a sharing of responsibilities inside the home as well, that allows both some dignity.

This would also help resolve many situations where a man feels threatened by a working woman. Why wouldn’t he. She earns, she spends, she invests, and on top of that, she is independent in terms of being able to manage her own existence completely, including running of her own home.

There is no point pushing the women down. What needs to happen is the removal of the “un-machoness” associated with responsibilities at home and recognise it as the actions of a responsible and independent individual, whether male or female. This would actually add some power to the increasingly “lazy” image of men among women and empower them with some self-respect, while empowering the women with acceptance and support from the one source that matters the most.

Please not that I am not speaking of every man out here. There are many couples who are already on this journey and find themselves comfortable both inside and outside the home, and the mutual respect and closeness can be seen a mile off in such couples.

I sincerely think that this is an important adaption that is the need of today’s times.

Female foeticide is a saddening problem in India. While many modern and educated families don’t really care about the sex of their children, rural families want boys. Girls are an unwelcome strain on the family finances for the dowry in their weddings, as well as incapable of physically standing up to the strain of labour intensive occupations like farming, which is the mainstay of India.

It is easy for us to sit in the cities and preach what should be, but to a poor, illiterate farmer (or stubborn orthodox family) it is the male child that matters. Whether it is for bringing in money as dowry, or staying in the home to care for parents in the old age, manage labour intensive occupations, carry on the family name, or just out of plain prejudice, but the fact remains that our words cannot change preferences of people.

It is extremely unethical to abort a child for being female. On the other hand, for a person without the understanding of ratios of males to females or even plain old fairness to their own progeny, it is something that is to be framed and worshipped, but not done.

I found the Indian government’s initiative toward adopting the unwanted girl children noteworthy. Here is something that can save some of those lives lost to orthodox preferences, but the one stumbling block in this that I see, is that very few people will be comfortable approaching someone to hand over their daughter and say that they don’t want her, even if it is true. This will be perceived as heartlessness, in a society where sin is not sin if it remains hidden from the world.

I read this article on how the ancient system of foundling wheels, where mothers could leave their babies in convents has been adopted by a hospital in Rome to help collect babies their mothers plan to abandon.

ROME, Feb. 27 — In the Middle Ages, new mothers in Rome could abandon their unwanted babies in a “foundling wheel” — a revolving wooden barrel lodged in a wall, often in a convent, that allowed women to deposit their offspring without being seen.

Now a Rome hospital, the Casilino Polyclinic, has introduced a technologically advanced version of the foundling wheel — not at all a wheel but very much like an A.T.M. booth. For the first time a new mother left her baby there on Saturday night, and on Monday the child, a boy about 3 months old, was doing well, said Dr. Piermichele Paolillo, who directs the neonatal unit at the hospital.

This is only a very small part of the article and I recommend all to read the whole thing.

This set me thinking. We have very strong plans in India to encourage adoption of female children to combat female foeticide. This would also enable parents who later had a change of heart to reclaim their daughters. A truly inspiring initiative. The government plans to adopt these girls in order to give them a life.

I remember thinking when this was announced about who would openly give up their girl children to orphanages. Surely, this itself would mean a social stigma, and the foeticide would only marginally be affected.

Could this system from ancient Rome be put to good use in this programme in India?

It would have several benifits. The anonimity would encourage people to use the facility without fearing social criticism, saving the lives of many unborn girls. The government would probably find larger support of its adoption scheme from rural organizations and people. The girls would get a life, rather than an abortion for fear of being saddled with a female child.

It would become far more easy to crack down on providers of illegal abortions, and providers who may be doing so under local pressure/demand would be able to advise their clients of this more acceptable alternative.

Based on records of dates of the child being left and DNA tests, parents who change their mind and want to claim their daughters would still be able to identify them.

I suspect, though I may be wrong, that the refusal of sex determination tests, with this option as the plan of action would allow the family to form an emotional bond with the unborn child rather than thinking of it as genetic currency, and perhaps, just perhaps, they would love her even after she was born, and would not want her to grow up an orphan.

This is not so well written, so if anyone feels they could put it better, please feel free to suggest changes. I think this is an important issue in India.

This is the very first post on this site. I am proud to have finally created this place as a platform for interaction for all sorts of Indians on the subject of their motherland. I’d been thinking about this for a very long time, but somehow always found the project to be too daunting, too huge to take up on my own.

India is a vast place. The sheer diversity of India is perhaps beyond comprehension of a single individual, yet, we are all Indians. Our interests vary, our habits, beliefs, concerns……. they are all different. Yet, we are all Indians and what happens in our motherland happens to us as well, in varying degrees.

Today, India is going good. Our economy is booming, we’re the country with the most number of billionaires in Asia after overtaking Japan. All sorts of industries are flourishing. There is improved satisfaction with life and better hopes for futures.

Yet, the diversity of the Indian society is not only cultural. We have the richest, and we also have the embarrassingly poor. Our educated professionals are respected worldwide for their knowledge, and we are also struggling with illiteracy. We even have the film industry that churns out a phenomenal number of films a year and our population is largely rural.

As we zip into progress, I think a need of the time is to reach out. To reach out to people of all sorts. I don’t only mean the lesser previledged or anything, just to reach out and understand the different people who are with us in this journey, to broaden our own horizons through the diversity of India.

At the moment, I am not very clear on where this initiative will go in the future. I guess, it is like India in this way too. The potential is tremendous, what remains to be seen is how much effort is taken.

I wish myself and all the people here the very best and hope that this site will be able to bring in new thoughts, initiatives and hopes.