Female Feticide in Punjab

Anganwari worker, Surinder Kaur, keeps track of births in the small village of Kajampur in the Narwansharh district of Punjab. The state has become well known as the epicenter of female feticide in India. Still, Kajampur is a success story. Partially due to the government's enforcement efforts, more girls than boys were born here last year.

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Marisa and I went to Punjab this weekend to research the practice of female feticide, that is the aborting of female fetuses in order to give birth to only boys. This happens all across India, but the prosperous state of Punjab is one of the worst offenders. Across the state, there are less than 800 girls born for every 1000 boys. In some villages that number dips down to less than 500 girls for every 1000 boys.

Ultrasound clinics have become booming business in Punjab. And midwives are the primary channel to direct pregnant mothers to testing centers and eventually to abortion doctors. Since it is illegal for doctors to use ultrasound machines to reveal a fetus' gender, scanning centers will not even speak to the mothers. They speak in code to the midwives: sat sri akal (a Sikh greeting) if the test reveals a girl and namaste (a Hindi greeting) for a boy. The midwives make around 2000 rupees ($50) for arranging the ultrasound and abortions.

Of course, no one will admit to sex selecting their children and over the last several years an ernest crack down has begun on the practice. But it's not easy, since no one makes a complaint to the government. Parents, midwives, scanning centers, and abortion doctors are satisfied co-conspirators.

We met with top health officials in Punjab's capital that told us the state was making major headway against the practice. Then we met with Krishan Kumar, the district commisioner for Nawanshahr. Kumar admits that many villages under his purview are doing worse not better. He has implemented a computer system to track all pregnant mothers in his district and he holds meetings with town leaders where the sex ratios are particularly low.

We went to one such village, Chakli Sujait. Over the last six years, the village has seen 53 births. Thirty four were boys and only 19 were girls. The villagers and midwife we spoke with vehemently claim that it is just nature and they love their girls as much as their boys. Indeed, they may be telling the truth since the sample size is so small. Still, we got the feeling that they were lying and the NGO worker that brought us to the village told us much the same.

It was not surprising that this town knew the script. There has been much media attention paid to the district, partially because of it's dismal numbers, but also because of the very active and vocal work of Kumar.

Next week we hope to travel to other areas that are not as well coached in order to find the truth.