India Dishonoured: Behind a Nation's War on Women by Sunny Hundal Page A
Authors: Sunny Hundal
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provided independence and security to millions of people. As social attitudes have become more liberal, women are visible like never before: out shopping, driving scooters or flash cars, buying houses with their own money, rejecting old traditions and even asserting their right to choose life-partners.
It is commonly believed these changes are tilting the balance in favour of women’s liberation; that education and rising incomes would ease the problems; that this is primarily a problem in villages. In fact these assumptions can easily be turned on their head. The contradiction of India is such that while women have more freedom than ever, violence against them is sharply on the rise. Furthermore, infant girls are more likely to be aborted or murdered among relatively richer and educated families than poorer households.
Of course, the attitudes that many Indians show towards women are common across the world. My aim with this mini-book is to illustrate how religion and culture underpins many of these attitudes, and how the intermingling of technology, liberalisation and economic reforms has created a toxic mixture that exacerbates the problem. These factors have come together to create an army of single, angry men who will likely never find wives and settle down because there simply aren’t the matching number of women. That is a problem not just for them but Indian society as a whole.
The outpour of anger and grief in December 2012 did not just highlight a widespread problem – it also underlined the fact that it was getting worse every year. The National Criminal Records Bureau (NCRB) recorded a 112% increase in reported rapes between 1990 and 2008. Assaults on women have increased more than any other crime recorded in India, while the number of girls under the age of six keeps dropping every year relative to the number of boys.
2.
Back in 1991 Indian demographers were taken by surprise when data from the latest Census reached their desks. They were convinced they had under-counted women from various parts of the country since the national sex ratio had dropped to an unprecedented 927 women per 1000 men, down from 946 since independence in 1947. For children under the age of seven, the drop was even sharper: from 983 girls to 945 for every 1000 boys. In some parts of states such as Bihar and Rajasthan the sex ratio was a stark 600:1000 - among the lowest in the world.
They ran some tests to check whether the Census was indeed flawed. It wasn’t. The cause, they soon realised, was a massive explosion in sex-selection before the child was even born.
The seeds of the 1991 panic were sown earlier in 1978, when, after finding that a worryingly high proportion of women wanted to abort female foetuses, the government banned sex-selection in public hospitals. However they hadn’t considered the unintended consequences – the ban sparked a boom in privately run medical centres offering the same services. As the industry grew exponentially over the 1980s, prices for the test became cheaper and affordable even for poorer families.
Private clinics weren’t just much cheaper; they actively encouraged parents to abort their child. An infamous ad slogan at the time called on them to, “Pay 5,000 rupees today and save 50,000 rupees [in dowry payments] tomorrow.” 1 Rs 5000 in 1991 is roughly Rs 25,000 in 2013 prices ($465, £300) Parents who wanted a son, but would not go as far as killing their daughters, chose abortion.
In fact, it became even cheaper than that. Amniocentesis, a relatively inexpensive scientific technique previously used to detect genetic conditions, started being used to determine the sex of the unborn child. Ultrasound equipment was cheaper than ever – the test could be done for between Rs 70 ($6.50, £4) and Rs 500 ($46.50, £30). 2 Rs 70 in 1991 is roughly Rs 350 in 2013 prices ($6.50, £4); Rs 500 is roughly Rs 2,500 now ($46.50, £30)
In the face of pressure from some women’s groups, the
It is commonly believed these changes are tilting the balance in favour of women’s liberation; that education and rising incomes would ease the problems; that this is primarily a problem in villages. In fact these assumptions can easily be turned on their head. The contradiction of India is such that while women have more freedom than ever, violence against them is sharply on the rise. Furthermore, infant girls are more likely to be aborted or murdered among relatively richer and educated families than poorer households.
Of course, the attitudes that many Indians show towards women are common across the world. My aim with this mini-book is to illustrate how religion and culture underpins many of these attitudes, and how the intermingling of technology, liberalisation and economic reforms has created a toxic mixture that exacerbates the problem. These factors have come together to create an army of single, angry men who will likely never find wives and settle down because there simply aren’t the matching number of women. That is a problem not just for them but Indian society as a whole.
The outpour of anger and grief in December 2012 did not just highlight a widespread problem – it also underlined the fact that it was getting worse every year. The National Criminal Records Bureau (NCRB) recorded a 112% increase in reported rapes between 1990 and 2008. Assaults on women have increased more than any other crime recorded in India, while the number of girls under the age of six keeps dropping every year relative to the number of boys.
2.
Back in 1991 Indian demographers were taken by surprise when data from the latest Census reached their desks. They were convinced they had under-counted women from various parts of the country since the national sex ratio had dropped to an unprecedented 927 women per 1000 men, down from 946 since independence in 1947. For children under the age of seven, the drop was even sharper: from 983 girls to 945 for every 1000 boys. In some parts of states such as Bihar and Rajasthan the sex ratio was a stark 600:1000 - among the lowest in the world.
They ran some tests to check whether the Census was indeed flawed. It wasn’t. The cause, they soon realised, was a massive explosion in sex-selection before the child was even born.
The seeds of the 1991 panic were sown earlier in 1978, when, after finding that a worryingly high proportion of women wanted to abort female foetuses, the government banned sex-selection in public hospitals. However they hadn’t considered the unintended consequences – the ban sparked a boom in privately run medical centres offering the same services. As the industry grew exponentially over the 1980s, prices for the test became cheaper and affordable even for poorer families.
Private clinics weren’t just much cheaper; they actively encouraged parents to abort their child. An infamous ad slogan at the time called on them to, “Pay 5,000 rupees today and save 50,000 rupees [in dowry payments] tomorrow.” 1 Rs 5000 in 1991 is roughly Rs 25,000 in 2013 prices ($465, £300) Parents who wanted a son, but would not go as far as killing their daughters, chose abortion.
In fact, it became even cheaper than that. Amniocentesis, a relatively inexpensive scientific technique previously used to detect genetic conditions, started being used to determine the sex of the unborn child. Ultrasound equipment was cheaper than ever – the test could be done for between Rs 70 ($6.50, £4) and Rs 500 ($46.50, £30). 2 Rs 70 in 1991 is roughly Rs 350 in 2013 prices ($6.50, £4); Rs 500 is roughly Rs 2,500 now ($46.50, £30)
In the face of pressure from some women’s groups, the
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