India aspires to be the Vishwaguru or world’s teacher but who wants to emulate a nation where new born babies and infants are simply thrown away because they are girls? Even as the nation’s capital prepares to host the prestigious G20 meet two such cases have come up in just two days where girl child was abandoned.
First incident is from Delhi’s Fatehpurberi where a one-day old girl child was stuffed in a bag and thrown away. The child was alive and crying when a passerby heard her. He picked her up and took to the hospital. Police is investigating the CCTV cameras and trying to find for the child’s parents. Though, it is not hard to guess that the child was thrown way by the parents because it was a girl, so there seems to be not much point in trying to find them. The second incident comes from Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh where a new born child was found abandoned in bushes of Kathwariya village under Madhi Kalan village Panchayat in Satna District.
A male child is preferred over a girl child in the vast majority of India’s home. A vast majority of the Indian couples go through multiple pregnancies only to secure the birth of a boy and in the process, several “unwanted” girls are born. The Economic Survey of 2017-18 puts this number at a staggering 21 million. The number is arrived at by looking at the sex of the last born child in a family. It has been seen that couples stop reproducing after a son is born and thus, most homes in India has four to five girls followed by one boy. These girls are often not treated well, resources are not allocated to them fairly, they are denied of education, health care etc. The worst part is that families which cannot afford to raise several children simply throw away the new born unwanted girls or worse, kill them. The data on abandoned children in India is not easily available or reliable. According to National Crime Record Bureau data of 2020 there were 1529 cases of abandonment which includes infanticide and feticide. But experts say that the real number of cases are much higher since most abandonments are not reported. Babies are thrown in polybags, sacks etc in areas where nobody can find them. They are dragged by dogs and other stray animals and so on. The state of Madhya Pradesh has the highest number of child abandonment cases in India consistently. At least one infant was abandoned everyday between 2019-2021 in Madhya Pradesh.
