Chandigarh, November 22
Dwindling sex-ratio in Haryana, blame it on Delhi! The justification for the state’s skewed gender statistics can’t get easier. Then there are touts, greedy doctors, a failed ANM network and ineffective administrators which snuff the life out of an unborn girl child.
In districts where sex-ratio has plummeted in the last few years, including Jind, Mahendergarh, Rewari, Panchkula and Rohtak, the administration is quick to wash its hands off any responsibility.
“Delhi, with its lax laws and indifference to sex-determination clinics, is the real culprit. Truckloads of pregnant women, herded together from villages in areas close to the Capital, are taken to clinics where illegal Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) is performed,” says an official in Rohtak.
The same refrain finds echo in a number of other districts, especially those in the NCR region. It is an open secret in Rohtak that the easiest way to get rid of an unwanted pregnancy is to contact a tout. Mostly local men, who want to make quick money, act as touts. They keep track of the village demography and are always on the prowl for “dissatisfied” pregnant women and families craving for the birth of a boy.
“It’s all a day’s work and the quickest way to dump the unborn child. The data in Rohtak shows that areas towards Bhiwani are better off when it comes to the gender ratio than the areas close to Delhi which have a sex ratio as low as 680: 1,000 in some villages,” reveal health authorities.
In the Jat heartland of Jind, people have no qualms in admitting that a girl child is unwelcome. Like elsewhere in the state, here too, the ANM network has failed to deliver. Since the ANMs are local women, assigned the job to monitor the health of pregnant women and keep track of the pregnancy as it progresses, they can’t dare to pass on any information against the villagers.
“The ANM network can’t be expected to work at the village level because their hands are virtually tied. If they do dare to give information on a terminated pregnancy or a sex-determination test, the whole village will stand together and boycott the ANM. If she has to stay in the village, she can’t be expected to go against the villagers. There exists a tacit understanding between the villagers and the ANMs,” the authorities maintain.
Sources in the district administration of the worst-hit districts contend that there are some doctors
plying mobile vans to carry out illegal MTPs in certain areas. “Our experience indicates that the women wanting to terminate their pregnancy usually never go to one doctor. They have a check-up at one place, prescription from another, various examinations from a third and so on. Some mobile vans were active in the Bhiwani-Narnaul area and occasionally visit villages to carry out MTPs. Pregnant women flock to these mobile clinics in the garb of checking foetus well-being (FWB) and get their job done,” reveals an official.
Then, the district administration has its own share of “black sheep” who work in connivance with these errant doctors and private clinics, supplying them information of sting operations and decoys, resulting in the failure of such operations while the guilty get away with impunity. Also, with a number of government agencies co-ordinating, regulation and monitoring gets diffused.
Health authorities opine that till the punishment for tests and illegal MTPs is not doctor-centric, people can’t be participants in a movement against the crime despite all the attempts to change mindsets.
