Female foeticide spread from North, says crusader

Aparna Banerji

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Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, May 5

He is among those responsible for initiating the historic litigation which saw gender determination ads on search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft banned in the country. A Mumbai IIT graduate, and an anti-female foeticide campaigner, Dr Sabu Mathew George thinks of female foeticide as a genocide which has gradually spread from North India to the rest of the country.

Mathew who has presided over panels and helped initiate litigation to protect the girl child in the country, says the present situation in Punjab has reached a stagnation point. George was one of the mobilising forces for the Union Health Ministry and Jammu and Kashmir Government to enact amendments to the PC-PNDT Act in 2002 (to implement laws from the embryo stage rather than foetus). He is also among the front runners who highlighted the issue of a dip in female births in Punjab and Haryana in 2001. One of the activists who aided the government to sensitise officials to female foeticide ahead of the 2011 Census, he is also quick to point out the West’s ‘hypocrisy’ in highlighting the Indian foeticide problem while allowing sex determination ads to run in their local newspapers. Mathew makes shocking revelations about the spread of the foeticide. Excerpts:

Traditionally, Punjab and Haryana are notorious foeticide belt of India, how did Tamil Nadu come in the picture?

A doctoral dissertation on the children’s nutrition programme took me to villages in Tamil Nadu in 1986. The government’s nutrition programme was not working in the state. These happened to be remote areas. I raised funding to work in villages and had 20 persons working with me. In 1986, in the villages people started telling me about infanticide. We worked for the growth of children in 12 villages. Of these, in six they were killing girls. The girls were being killed in the most remote six villages. Hence, I got a natural comparison between those killing girls and those not killing. Since I was working for children it also featured in my doctoral research.

What is the foeticide scenario today?

In 2001, Punjab and Haryana were deplorable. It was bad so we started making noise. Punjab significantly improved and Haryana is still doing much better so both significantly bettered their performance during the 2011 Census. However, Punjab currently languishes, it is stagnating. Currently the worst part is that in the rest of the country – Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Uttarahkand, the situation is worse. These state’s never figured on the foeticide map, they came out in the 80s or 90s. Kerala which has not been on the foeticide map for a hundred years suddenly saw a half per cent dip (in female ratio). This is bothersome and needs to be addressed.

Uttarakhand spirngs another shocker.

In 2011, the whole district of PiIibhit saw a major drop in female gender ratio. What we are worried about – this area sent quacks with ultrasounds to all upper districts of Uttarakhand. Pilibhit is on the border of Uttarakhand. One of the worst districts in Uttarakhand in 2011 was Pithoragarh. Hence, here is an area which probably lacks many basic amenties but it has found technology to kill baby girls. Other shockers in 2011 were Beed in Marathdwada, Jammu and Samba in Jammu and Kashmir and Jhajjar in Harayana. In Pithoragarh, the situation isn’t much better yet.

What do you think about the scenario of foeticide travelling to the West?

This is a genocide travelling to places wherever Asian communities live. I lived in the US from 1981 to 1986. I returned in the 90s. Only in 94 I started using the Internet. I was reading one of the largest selling newspapers outside India and saw advertisements for sex determination. A white doctor, who was targeting sex determination for the Indian community in the US and was earning big, wanted to go to Canada for a better market. But the Canadian Government did not allow him. What he did was set up clinics across the border in Washington, on the West Coast and East Coast. Hence, the nexus is much at work here and while the West condemns India for foeticide, gender determination ads continue being published in papers there. In England, Punjabi newspapers began advertising for sex determination tests as early as 90s. Like here, Asian community members there also fight against it. In Canada, Ujjal Dosanjh’s wife campaigned against this lobby. In Australia, they recently found girls were being eliminated through IVF technology. In Delhi this is happening in a big way.

On his breakthrough litigations

In 2008, I filed a case against Google, Microsoft, Yahoo for the Government of India to take action on gender determination ads on the Internet. We got a good judgment in December 2017 that these ads are all banned and they should remove these. We are still struggling to get all regulations implemented. In 2013, the Voluntary Health Association of Punjab also filed a case against doctors not maintaining proper gender determination or scanning records. I became a part of the case in 2018 and on May 3 this year, we gave received a formidable judgment in the case. The SC has ruled that records have to be kept. You can’t use clerical error. You can’t convert crime into a clerical error. It has strongly come out against such a practice. The doctors’ lobby is not happy but they are not expected to be. The 1994 Act only covered the foetus. Before foetus, is the embryo and before the embryo is the egg. There are people who were selectively indulged in eliminating girls in the IVF process. The petition we filed said the court should define gender determination from the first stage. The then government was fortunately serious and amid a winter session, which remained disrupted with the fallout of the 2002 Godhra riots, the amendment came in on the last day of the winter session.