I am fifteen days old. And I am lying in a dirty trash can.

I don’t know where

It is difficult to breathe. And I cannot see as my eyes haven’t opened yet.

I used to be warm and comfortable, I remember, but now it’s icily cold.

I am alone but not unattended I think. I can feel something.

Yes there are stray dogs sniffing at me and large rats and ants nibbling at me too.

I have bites and bruises all over my little body. It hurts.

I haven’t done anything wrong, yet I believe I’ve been left to die.

I don’t know why.

But you see I am a girl child and in many parts of India they don’t want me.

No, not even my mother. She doesn’t care…  

And why that is so continues to remain a problem. A major problem. Poor, hungry or beaten up; fat, sleek or prosperous many mothers of Indian daughters fail to realize that if the same fate had befallen them they wouldn’t have been alive to produce off springs at all, let alone any kind. So wouldn’t it be in their own interest to fight for the right of the girl child to live? But sadly even today many are brainwashed and browbeaten to think otherwise. Male or female the gestation period for any baby is the same and any mother will admit that the same love extends to this unborn foetus till it is born and societal influences begin. Then the question is why allow those who are physically incapable of bearing children dictate who is to live and who is to die?  

What is astonishing is that it is not only the ignorant or superstitious poor but it is also the rich and the vast social-climbing educated middle class who are equally if not more to blame for these deaths. In a country that is going places with women CEOs aplenty we have with their mothers’ active connivance, abortions that get rid of unwanted female feotuses and newborn baby-girls tied up in polythene bags dumped in rubbish heaps-left to be mangled to gruesome deaths. All without an iota of guilt.  

Reason 1: A boy they say can grow up to be of help to his parents while a girl grown up is only a monetary burden

Fact: That was in the olden days when ignorance was rife and the ubiquitous ‘dowry’ was rampant. If this distasteful element that is a horrendous threat to civil society is removed, should it not introduce a level playing field? And have girls not shown how capable they are of earning and in fact of doing a better job of looking after old parents.

Yet families’ rich, poor and middle class still kill their little girls.  

Reason 2:  A boy they say carries on the ‘family name’. His children inherit. A dubious belief that is the main cause of this problem.

 Fact: It is all in the mind. The lineage does not necessarily lie in his manhood.

Take a leaf out of the Nair community in Kerala where the birth of every girl is a celebration. A matrilineal society, lineage is through mother to daughter with daughters inheriting. But control lay in the hands of the son as head of the family. The ‘maama’s’ diktat ran. His so called pride and self esteem as a man were thus kept intact. Even in today’s nuclear families where pay packets and not inherited wealth reign, the lineage continues. Happily.  

Reason 3: Wealth is kept in the family through boys they say.

Fact: The Nairs have shown how it can be done- through girls as well. And whatever wealth there was, was controlled by the boy.

No dowry deaths. No infanticides. No mother in law –daughter in law clashes .Pride and self esteem for the boy. And economic independence and dignity for the girl child.

This was the norm.

As in any society there can be aberrations. But even then they didn’t kill their girls to let their boys live or vice versa.

But in any case with girls in high places these days wouldn’t there be a more equitable distribution of wealth?    

Reason 4: Only a ‘he’ can light the pyre?

Fact:  Hasn’t it been proved that it doesn’t have to be so? Methods have changed. Only beliefs need to change. Nowhere does it say that a girl is not to light the pyre. Not even apparently the Vedas. Even if it perhaps justifies the need for a boy it surely does not justify murdering little girls.  

Reason 5: Boys are an investment for a better future. Keep them alive somehow. Dispense with the girl who is weak and secondary. A burden.

Fact: Historically and socially girls have always been deemed to be second class citizens. But surely today time has shown that girls are second to none in everyway? That they are not dispensable nor a burden.  

Be that as it may is all this reason enough to take a life unborn or alive? One might genuinely want a boy and not a girl and not for any of the above reasons but even so is it reason enough to abort or abandon?    

Dowry deaths and now infanticide are an evil fallout of the dowry system which appears to be the root cause of all our social ills .Our patriarchal families who perceived the birth of sons as a male accomplishment and a triumph of manhood need to accept the fact that it is immaterial who carries the name when the blood is the same. Science and medicine have proved it so. And that the dowry or money which comes along, comes or goes with a girl who has not been aborted or killed at infancy.

Apart from the sex ratio going seriously askew if we kept killing little girls would there be any daughters(-in- law) left to bring in the dowry or the male child? So what lineage or wealth and family-name would we be talking about? And what price ‘manhood’! Patriarchy is not a divine right either. So it should make sense now shouldn’t it to let daughters live?   

Despite public awareness campaigns with dowries made illegal and sex selective abortions being banned, both are prevalent in India especially so in the north. If women themselves, rich or poor, bow to callous familial pressure and abort or throw their helpless infants into trash cans what hope can there be for the future of our very existence?  

So the mindset needs a radical change. And that change can only be wrought by women themselves. So girl children themselves who are lucky to have made it to adulthood and motherhood must take steps to evolve that change. They need to be more alive to the plight of their girl children. They need to realize that passive indifference is akin to murder. They need to sensitize the men who are usually the decision makers.

The poor among them need to be educated about it and the rich need to be shamed into taking a stand against it.

They as mothers or about- to- become mothers need to fight for the lives of their about-to-be born or newly born daughters. Which fight is not happening, enough, if current statistics are to be believed. For even highly educated young wives agree to get sex detection tests done and hardly demur when asked to abort. And it is generally felt that the rich abort and the poor it is who abandon or smother.   

But if all daughters rich or poor, refused to get married to dowry seekers- as is happening sporadically now-and all daughters-in-law and mothers-to-be stopped going to sex detection clinics and refused to abandon their baby girls, this problem would probably go away completely.

Enlightened families who empower their girls to live life on equal terms even as they do their boys need to join hands to tackle this menace.

The police and our courts need to get more proactive-as in the case of dowry deaths- regardless of the name and stature of the families involved.

Only by severely punishing them, will those who influence and encourage the killing of little girls whether it is in the womb or outside, stop propagating it.

Arrest the in- laws as in dowry deaths. Book them for murder.

An otherwise healthy unborn foetus too has the right to live. 

With such collective murders on their conscience no society can survive.  

Let there be no doubt, a nation that murders her daughters has surely no place to go to, other than the same rubbish heap she consigns her baby girls to.

Save her life to save our future.