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Jammu:
Newspaper advertisements, TV messages, raids on ultrasound
clinics, door-to-door campaigns -- shamed by the dismal sex ratio
revealed by the latest census report, the Jammu and Kashmir
government is trying every trick in the book to save the girl
child in the state.
The census report, released in March, reveals there are only 859
females against 1,000 males in the state, a figure so dismal that
it is next only to the two usual suspects, Punjab and Haryana.
In 2001, the sex ratio in the state was 941 females to every 1,000
males.
Chief Minister Omar Abdullah was evidently distressed by this
alarming trend. "We are the third worst state in this regard after
Punjab and Haryana. If anything needed a mass movement and public
appeals it would be this," he posted on micro-blogging website
Twitter.
It was high time the state government woke up and launched a
programme to combat the social evil.
"We have adopted an innovative way (to improve the sex ratio), we
are telling people how girls are doing better in various
examinations and how they are occupying high positions," Rattan
Lal, a health department official, told IANS.
The department has also sealed over 30 ultrasound clinics across
the state and made it clear that any clinic conducting pre-natal
tests would face punishment for violating the law of the land.
State Health Minister Sham Lal Sharma has also been seen reviewing
the progress of the work done by his department in keeping a check
on the menace.
"This had become necessary because female foeticide is murder and
we cannot allow the murder of our generations. We must ensure that
no child is killed in the womb of a mother," Sharma told the
department in a meet recently.
The work is visible. Health department officials have started
visiting houses and are telling people about the importance of the
girl child.
The success of Ovessa Iqbal, the first Muslim woman from Jammu and
Kashmir to have qualified for civil service, has also unwittingly
helped the campaign.
"We are telling people that girls can rise to high positions and
can serve parents and society much better than is thought," said
Rattan.
But what has appealed to people most is the TV advertisements
bemoaning the loss of the girl child.
"A multi-faceted approach has been adopted...people-to-people
contact, generation of awareness among people, especially women
folk, that the girl child should be allowed to take birth. In the
modern-day world, girls are as good as boys, rather better than
them," Sharma said.
Swarn Jamwal, a women's activist in Jammu, said: "We need to take
concrete steps in this regard before the situation drifts further.
Only lip service and words will not suffice."
(Binoo Joshi
can be contacted at binoo.j@ians.in)
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