Govt to care for unwanted girl child

Govt plans a 'cradle scheme' to curb rise in female foeticide, reports Chetan Chauhan. Express your views here...

Updated on: Feb 19, 2007, 01:53:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The government would soon provide home to an unwanted girl child.

In a bid to check the alarming rate of female feticide, the ministry of Women and Child Development (WCD) has proposed to set up an orphanage in each district of the country where parents can leave their girl child, if they don't want to bring them up.

WCD minister Renuka Chowdhury told PTI that the orphanage would be part of the crèche scheme that the ministry has proposed for the 11th five-year plan.

"We want to put a cradle or Palna in every district headquarters. What we are saying to the people is have your children, don't kill them. And if you don't want a girl child, leave her to us," she said.

Under the proposed scheme, the government will bear the cost of the upbringing of the girl child, a step considered necessary to correct the skewed sex ratio of the country. The government is already running Rajiv Gandhi Creche Scheme for children of working women and the orphanages would be an extension of the scheme, a ministry official said. "This is part of our ministry's Integrated Child Development Scheme," an official said, informing that the proposal has already been submitted to the Planning Commission.

Chowdhury felt that the scheme would provide at least a chance to the girl child to live. "It would be better than killing them," she replied, when asked whether the scheme can lead to parents abandoning the girl child.

With the scheme, the government believes the gene pool will be maintained and parents, who realise their mistake, can claim their girl child later.

Sex ratio as per 2001 Census in the country was 933 females per 1,000 males. The more affluent states like Punjab, Delhi, Rajasthan and Haryana had sex ratio lower than 875. The latest Census figures on infant mortality rate shows that death of girl child in these states is increasing despite government interventions. Chowdhury termed it a 'national shame' for a country whose economy is growing at the rate of nine per cent.

Email Chetan Chauhan: chetan@hindustantimes.com

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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