"India is missing about 10 million daughters since the widespread use of ultrasound”The phenomenon of female infanticide and foeticide has reached epidemic levels in many states in India.
Female foeticide is the intentional killing of baby girls due to the preference for male babies and from the low value associated with the birth of females
A well-documented study carried in the prestigious British medical journal "Lancet" makes the startling revelation that around ten million female fetuses may have been aborted in India over the last two decades.
Lancet traced this unhealthy trend to the rapid proliferation of clinics and nursing homes offering fetus-screening services all over the country and the excessive craving for the male progeny, which is deep, rooted in the Indian psyche. Due to the advancement of technology mobile sex-selection clinics tests can be performed even in the remotest village, with the highest number of missing children within the age-group zero to six years.
As John, points out, "in rural India, the centuries-old practice of female infanticide can still be considered a wise course of action." (Dahlburg, "Where killing baby girls 'is no big sin'," The Los Angeles Times [in The Toronto Star, February 28, 1994.]) According to census statistics, "From 972 females for every 1,000 males in 1901 ... the gender imbalance has tilted to 929 females per 1,000 males. ... In the nearly 300 poor hamlets of the Usilampatti area of Tamil Nadu [state], as many as 196 girls died under suspicious circumstances [in 1993] ... Some were fed dry, unshelled rice that punctured their windpipes, or were made to swallow poisonous powdered fertilizer. Others were smothered with a wet towel, strangled or allowed to starve to death." Dahlburg profiles one disturbing case from Tamil Nadu:
The bias against females in India is related to the fact that "Sons are called upon to provide the income; they are the ones who do most of the work in the fields. In this way sons are looked to as a type of insurance. With this perspective, it becomes clearer that the high value given to males decreases the value given to females."
"Female infanticide is the intentional killing of baby girls due to the preference for male babies and from the low value associated with the birth of females."
