Disappearing daughters

Girl children are methodically murdered in cold blood across the feudal terrain of Morena while illegal sex determination clinics bloom

Akash Bisht Morena

For decades, Morena district in Madhya Pradesh has been in news for all the wrong reasons. Famous for its dreaded Chambal ravines where legendary dacoits ruled the roost, lately, it has become one of the many districts in India with the lowest sex ratio. Only 35 km from Gwalior, where sundry ex-maharajas, queens and princes still call the shots, Morena has, in the recent past, witnessed an unusual surge in the number of clinics with crores being spent on modern ultrasound machines and other medical testing facilities that mushroom all over this arid, backward town. Signboards prominently announcing 'sex determination is not done here and female foeticide is a crime punishable under the law' can be seen outside every clinic. Uncannily, most of these dubious clinics are doing precisely that.

“It is ironic that sex determination and abortion are being done in most of these clinics displaying these boards,” points out a local journalist. The sex ratio of the entire district is 842 while in some blocks it is as low as 500-600. Many villages in some blocks have no females, or just a handful of girl children. Villages near Morena are dominated by the Gujjars and Thakurs. Whenever any woman in the family or community becomes pregnant they inevitably visit the town to do a sex determination test. If it's a boy there are celebrations; if it's a girl there is collective mourning. They believe that a girl child would only bring problems and prefer to abort it with the help of either the local daayi (mid-wife) or doctors who are minting money by brazenly violating the law.

Morena district has a dismal sex ratio of 842 which is among the lowest in the country. Experts working in the field say that these figures are not confirmed and the figure in some blocks are as low as 400. “This figure is of the entire district. If you go to certain villages dominated by the Gujjar and Rajput communities, the ratio is much lower than that of the district. In Kailaras and Pahadgarh blocks, more than 100 villages have a sex ratio lesser than 600, while in Jaura block it is even lower than 500,” informs Asha Singh, legal adviser to Jagosakhi, a non-governmental organisation working in the district.

The streets of Morena are testimony to this glaring disparity; there are very few girls visible in public places. They are absent on the roads and markets and rickshaws taking school children home are full of boys. A rikshaw-puller was cryptic, “Agar ladkiyan hongi tab to dikhengi, ladki sab chahte hain lekin apne nahin padosi ke ghar main (There are hardly any girls and hence can't be seen. Everyone wants a girl, not in their home but that of their neighbours.)”

The absence of girls is stark. On one of his official visits, former district magistrate, Dr Manohar Agnani, visited an aaganwadi centre in one of the villages. He noticed that there were no girls in this centre. He was told that there are hardly any girls in the village. Shocked with this revelation, Agnani wanted to know the reason behind it. On his instruction a team of district officials did a door-to-door survey in a village and found an alarmingly adverse child sex ratio. When the team discussed this with the villagers they disclosed the uncanny truth: sex determination was widespread and entrenched through sonography and if the foetus is that of a girl child it's inevitably terminated. They also revealed the names of several doctors and clinics who run this organised and illegal business of sex determination and abortion.