While every phenomenon happening in society today reflects the inequality between men and women, incidents like rape, molestation and physical abuse of children remain in the headlines of newspapers, there are many girls who are murdered in their mothers’ wombs before they even set foot in the world. Apart from this, many of those who get a chance to see the world die due to lack of good nutrition, neglect of parents or some disease at a young age.
According to a survey conducted by the government in 2018, 63 million girls are victims of such unspeakable deaths who were either killed just because they were ‘girls’ or died due to lack of good nutrition or lack of proper treatment for the disease. They died or we can say were murdered. Yes, you read that right!… This system is responsible for these deaths!
Where 29 percent of people in India live on Rs 47 per day in cities and Rs 33 per day in villages (as per the poverty line set by a new committee formed in 2014), where even after working hard all day, they cannot earn two meals a day, where raising and raising children has become a challenge, and there is no guarantee of their education or health facilities, the birth of a ‘girl’ is no less than ‘a mountain falling on your head’! According to the 2011 census data, 92 percent of the population living in villages lives on less than Rs 5000 per month. These data make it clear that not only girls but all children have to face the lack of resources in the homes. At a young age, they have to work beyond their capacity. Working beyond their capacity at a young age, not getting proper nutrition, and not being able to receive proper treatment for illnesses due to poverty – this is the story of children from every poor home. Here, if we now examine the government’s campaign ‘Beti Bachao Beti Padhau’, then we feel two kinds of emotions. On the one hand, it makes us laugh to hear that for the “success” of this campaign, the government had spent only 43 crores in 2016-2017, according to which every government school was to be given 5 lakh rupees (such a huge amount was spent by the government for the betterment of girls). But even out of these 5 lakhs, the entire amount could not reach many schools. Where it did reach, it was either not spent in the right direction or it had to be spent there due to dwindling funds for some other scheme. On the other hand, it also makes us angry to read that instead of increasing, the sex ratio in Haryana and Punjab has decreased, for example, in Panipat (Haryana), the sex ratio has decreased from 892 to 881 and in 4 cities of Punjab, the sex ratio has become even lower than the average sex ratio there. Whereas the main point of this sentence The agenda was to increase the sex ratio. Along with this, there was also a target to increase the enrolment of girls in secondary schools from 76% to 79%, but this too had to face a deficit instead of an increase.
While this system is responsible for the deaths of girls, the cultural backwardness of the people of India is also responsible. Cultural backwardness such as considering women as a ‘burden’ and ‘responsibility’, starting to collect money for their marriage as soon as they are born, and trading them in the name of dowry are also the reasons for the continuous decline in the share of women in the total population of India. According to a 2012 UNICEF report, the mortality rate of girls among children up to the age of 5 is double that of boys. Due to the prejudices created in the minds of people for women, they often become victims of neglect by their parents at home. Girls are given less priority than boys in matters of food, good clothes, education, health facilities etc. The thought of “girls should stay at home or they will go astray” also hinders their economic independence.
Today, when on the one hand, women in society are bound by backward values and on the other hand, the government is indifferent towards their rights and welfare and such prejudices are being further deepened by patriarchal and vulgar statements made by political leaders sitting in Parliament, then in such a time, the presence of a militant women’s movement has become the urgent need of the hour.