Mamta Kalia

emembered my old friend Professor Sandip
Kumar Jena who teaches at Cambridge
University and strongly opposes results
found after research along with opinions
from the West most of the time…
In Haryana the male-female birth ratio
has been disturbed to such an extent that
for every thousand men there are only
eight hundred and twenty five women left.
Many young as well as middle aged men
here are buying ‘brides’ from states like
Bengal and Assam. Since a number of social
and traditional values in our country are
given legal status, there is no compulsion
of registering marriages. Under such
circumstances, it would be difficult to
differentiate between women who have
been ‘bought’ or ‘married and then brought
over’. The police cannot take any action
in the matter of women being ‘bought’
in the absence of any sustainable evidence.
Nor can any legal action be taken against
tests like amniocentesis or even female
foeticide.
In this city, Dr. Sangwan, Dr. Yadav
and Dr. Mehra have earned crores of rupees
by conducting gender tests like
amniocentesis and induced abortions, but
no action is possible against them. These
doctors have a strong network extending
to Delhi and Chandigarh. The same
‘honourable’ minister inaugurated the new
block of Sangwan Nursing Home last year.
I had to stay there for quite a long time
for protocol and security arrangements
and could not reach home in time to
meet the American research team. They
had to wait for about thirty five minutes.
They wanted to know what role the police
was playing in cases related to female
foeticide. After the formal conversation
was over, a senior professor with deep
blue eyes expressed his concern over a
cup of tea and said, “Mr Barua, this malefemale
imbalance is going to be very
explosive some day. Any sensible person
can assume it…I agree that most of the
societies in the world are male dominated,
but still I am completely unable to
understand the mentality and the logic
behind termination of the unborn female
child though it is not something new. Even
in medieval times female children were
killed just after they were born, but that
practice was limited to the higher or the
upper middle class in a few castes. But
now, there is no such limit. This is insult
to the nature and is against its law of
balance…This imbalance is likely to lead
to a war in South Asia…and ultimately
it may lead to even world war…’
When the senior professor finished,
I refuted his argument about war and
world war. Prof. Nelson (that was his name)
had softened his stance a bit and had
argued that in states like Punjab and Haryana
when young men would remain deprived
of love and unmarried because of scarcity
of young girls, they would prefer to join
the army. After a certain age an unmarried
person starts behaving abnormally- either
he or she gets very aggressive or very
introverted, timid, fearful and dejected.
Some will join the army,some will enter
the world of crime, another will land up
in mental asylum. In such a situation even
if there is no war there is sure to be
a spread of anarchy.
I was not in a position to accept that
male-female imbalance could possibly
result in a regional battle or the next
and last world war. I still am not. A few
April-June 2010 :: 109