http://www.asianage.

com/life-and-style/women-are-also-heroes-767 Women are also heroes May 01, 2012 - Swati Vishnoi (The Asian Age) Women are also heroes and need better representation in Bollywood. A woman cannot be used as a commodity and cast in a certain mould. The hero needs to acknowledge the heroine because the women are also heroes. The gender-sensitive mindsets in Indian cinema will have to go, author Advaita Kala said recently citing Kahaani as an example. While some women in the industry agree with the author, others say that giving a female protagonist an equal status is back in tinsel town. Director of Aisha, Rajshree Ojha says, There is gender bias, but the industry is progressing. In most of the films, the hero gets a prominent role, while the heroine is a sidekick. Although there have been movies where actresses have played parallel and equal roles to heroes. In the past too, in movies like Pakeezah, Mother India, Rekha in Khoobsurat, Jhooti etc, actresses have played the main protagonists and pulled it off beautifully. But I feel the fate of women-oriented films is decided by the box office verdict. With Kahaani and The Dirty Picture, Vidya Balan has brought back the trend, which I hope should last for long. Madhureeta Anand, documentary filmmaker and director of the film Mere Khwabon Mein Jo Aaye, puts forward a strong point by saying that even though Bollywood is making women-oriented films, they are not portrayed in the right way. Bollywood being a part of our misogynist country, couldnt but have a gender-bias mindset. In the name of celebrating the modern Indian women in present day films, there is further commodification of women. Bollywood portrays the new Indian woman in lead roles either as a drunk prostitute or a bikini-clad babe who abuses and flashes her body. New-age Indian women are beautiful, strong and responsible, but if thats the way Indian cinema portrays women as lead protagonists, then such films shouldnt be made at all, she adds. But actress Esha Gupta feels otherwise. Although its still a mans world, women are moving on with the times. Even in films, I think actresses are getting their full due. My upcoming film Raaz 3 depicts me in a bold role. In the past too, recent movies like Jab We Met was all about Kareena. After all, the role basically depends on the demand of the film scripts, she shares.

http://family.wikinut.com/Another-Female-Infanticide-in-India/2_6_r_uf/ Another Female Infanticide in India It has become very common nowadays in India to find newspapers, flashing news about killings of female children. Within a short span of time many girl children have been sacrificed for the thirst for male children. Even in this

twenty first century many castes in the country are restricting the birth of female gender.

A country going dry of female members In spite of all efforts

Adverse results are already leading to social problems A country going dry of female members

India is Worried Outlookindia.com reported on 30,April, 2012 that a third case of abandoning a baby girl by her parents occurred within a fortnight. The newborn girl child was abandoned by her own parents at a hospital in a place called Rohtak, in Haryana. The parents of the baby girl left her abandoned in the hospital at night and left the place. On April 18, an auto-rickshaw driver found a four-day-old girl child, abandoned near a dustbin in Udyog Vihar. The baby was thrown, wrapped in a polybag. On April 13, a well off couple abandoned their eighteen month old girl child at the Civil Hospital in Gurgaon. Killing or abandoning baby girls is found very common in India. Many innocent babies, just because they are girls, are killed secretly in so many ways. Gender discrimination is increasing in the country in spite of many efforts taken by the government and welfare organizations. The demographic statistics showing the gender discrimination is really very shocking to any reasonable mind. Alarming difference in sex ratio Birth of a girl baby is considered as a curse to the family. Preference or sons over daughters has been a culture in the country. This can be seen

clearly in the demographic statistics fo India. According to the 2011 Census, the sex ratio in Haryana state is 877 females per 1,000 males. In spite of all efforts

Have you ever seen in any country posters requesting to protect female children? In India, many organizations have come out with such posters. Recently an NGO called SMILE has come out with an awareness message telling the people, Imagine advising your son eligible for marriage not to get married as there are not enough girls available to find a match for him. In some parts of India, there is only one girl available for every group of 15 boys eligible for marriage. Government is taking all measures The central government of India is taking many steps to curtail these gender discrimination practices. Yet, gender ratio in many states in the country is very discriminative. State governments take steps to safeguard the welfare of women. The state of Haryana, where the sex ratio of women is very low, set up a Corporation in 1987 for the development of women in the state and to promote activities for the development and advancement of women. They also undertake the task of socioeconomic and health development of women. Adverse results are already leading to social problems

India is Worried

The great variation in sex ratio is already creating social problems in the country. 1) Female foeticide and infanticide in Haryana have reduced the number of

girls. Jat youths in the state are unable to get brides in their state. They travel from Haryana state thousands of kilometers across the country in search of brides. 2) The shortage of women forces the men to to break culture, language and caste barriers to find suitable brides elsewhere in the country. 3) Girls are forced to marry before 18 and sometimes they are forced to marry very elderly men. Age difference between husband and wife is more than 10 years. It causes further psychological problems. 4) Men in the state become psychologically perverted which leads to many crimes. Sex abuse, rape and other crimes are increasing day by day. Going against nature for selfish reasons is always dangerous. Balance in gender ratio only can build up a healthy society. Female infanticide and female foeticide will definitely affect the whole humanity.

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1120501/jsp/nation/story_15439627.jsp#.T6 FsF2HxpAM

Call to stem dipping sex ratio - NAC urges govt to formulate national policy RADHIKA RAMASESHAN New Delhi, April 30: The National Advisory Council has asked the Centre to formulate a national policy to stem the declining sex ratio at birth that it believed was located at the complex interface of the status of women in Indian society, patriarchal social mores and prejudice, spread and misuse of medical technology and the changing aspirations of urban and rural society. The councils draft recommendations prepared by members Farah Naqvi and A.K. Shiva Kumar and posted on its website for comments outlined

four major constituents that could be a guide and a template for initiatives the Centre and the states might take in the future. These were strengthening the present legal regime to prevent the abuse of medical technology for sex selection and developing a legislative framework that included, but was not confined to, the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques Act, 1994 (PC and PNDT Act). The NAC, headed by Sonia Gandhi, also called for reviewing other genderrelated laws and policies, including the dowry prohibition law, sexual assault amendments to the IPC and the national population policy. It also suggested revisiting the current schemes of conditional cash transfers meant for the education of girls in schools and colleges. Naqvi and Kumar noted that the key considerations for drafting a national policy should be gender equity and gender justice and not just restricting it to decreasing birth of girl children, inter-sectoral planning and action, and safeguarding reproductive rights and the right to safe and legal abortion. On the last, they recommended that the national policy must specifically exhort governments and civil society actors to move away from the practice of pregnancy-tracking as a method of reducing sex selection. Declining sex ratio is an issue that enters the private domain of pregnancy, abortion and the right to choose. On the laws, they explained that there was need to go beyond the single legal remedy of the PC and PNDT Act because the act itself could become redundant with the spread of new technology, including pre- conception genetic manipulation. Listing the 16 existing cash incentive schemes initiated by the Centre and the states that include the Dhan Lakshmi Scheme, Ladli Lakshmi, the Mukhya Mantri Kanya Suraksha Yojana and the Mukhya Mantri Kanya Vivah Yojana, Balri Rakshak etc, the NAC members questioned their ability to directly change perceptions about a daughters worth. For example, some schemes provide incentives only if the couple accepts sterilisation after two children, others limit the incentive only to two girls, with a larger incentive for the first girl as compared to the second, Naqvi and Kumar pointed out. Do schemes inadvertently end up valuing girls differentially depending on their positions in the birth order? They sounded sceptical about targeting poor families with cash incentives, stating that their analysis of the child sex ratio from the 2001 census showed that ratios were lower among the educated and the affluent,

especially in cities and towns. So they emphasised that sex selection required social and behavioural change. In an era of a communications revolution, effective and wellplanned communications strategies can make a dent. They said that the strategies should specially target young unmarried women who are most open to questioning received wisdom and have the greatest discomfort with sex selection. The NAC members also pushed communications advocacy to be accompanied by grassroots mobilisation through panchayati raj institutions, unions, co-operatives, self-help groups etc.

Health department seeks NGO role in Hamari Beti Express drive

JAIPUR: The health department has decided to take the help of NGOs for running 'Hamari Beti Express' (a van) which has been launched on National Safe Motherhood Day on April 11 to make people aware about the declining sex ratio in the state. Four such vans were launched by the health department on April 11. The officials are distributing pamphlets and also showing documentaries to people in rural and urban areas as well.

32 doctors convicted for violating foeticide law

MUMBAI: Thirty-two doctors have been found guilty of violating the anti-sex determination law across the state till March 12. In all, 314 cases have been lodged in various criminal courts for violation of the Pre-Conception and Prenatal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act, 2003, or PCPNDT Act. Two doctors in Mumbai were convicted by the Dadar metropolitan magistrate for advertizing sex-selection facilities. The doctors were fined Rs 30,000 and sentenced to three years' rigorous imprisonment. http://www.hindustantimes.com/editorial-views-on/Edits/No-incentive-toshelve-this/Article1-848595.aspx

No incentive to shelve this

The child sex ratio in 2001 was 927 females for every 1,000 males. But a decade later, there are only 914 females for every 1,000 males. Thanks to this staggering dip, the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC), which sets the social agenda for the UPA government, has questioned cash-incentive schemes that were launched by the State to check female foeticide, saying that the money is being used by families for perpetuating another social ill: dowry. The NAC wants the government to re-evaluate such schemes to see whether they have any impact on the people or not. The Union government and 13 states have been offering cash incentives to poor families with twin objectives: save the girl child at birth and support her expenditure after she turns 18. While Punjab and Delhi give R1 lakh to the girl child, Madhya Pradesh offers R1.8 lakh. The money is kept as a fixed deposit plan in the name of the girl, with the hope that parents would use it for her education and growth. While taking regular stock of all government schemes is advisable since it can help the State redesign and re-position an ongoing scheme, in this particular case, the NAC seems to be mixing up two issues. True, as the NAC members suspect, there could be a link between cash incentives and dowry, but that should not be used to terminate such schemes. Even at the cost of sounding callous, it could be that the money was the only incentive for families to not indulge in foeticide. In any case, it is impossible to ascertain the end-use of the money doled out by the State in the name of different social schemes. For example, can the State, in any way stop the misuse of unemployment doles? In fact, in some cases, the cash incentive scheme for the girl child has not found many takers. For example, Kanyadaan that was launched by the Pune Municipal Corporation has not done well. There could be a variety of reasons for it, the most important being the lack of public awareness. Instead, of shelving a scheme, these issues need to be resolved. In any case, for a scheme like this it will be difficult to even justify what it has done for the girl child since no one will ever come forward and point out that only this scheme and nothing else pushed them into taking a positive view of the girl child. Instead of dumping the scheme, the NAC must formulate a process that can ensure that the money from the scheme is used for something fruitful: maybe the payment could be linked to certain expenditures like education, health, skill development etc. At the end of the day, it will be difficult to find a 100% foolproof method of doing it, and the best way would still be using all possible ways of educating people and inculcating a sense of responsibility for the girl child.

http://www.thehindu.com/news/states/karnataka/article3371457.ece

'Society will suffer if female foeticide is not checked'

Indian society will face serious social problems in the near future if evil practices such as female foeticide are not stopped, Karnataka High Court judge K. Sridhar Rao has said. He was delivering the inaugural address at a seminar on Pre-conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of sex selection) Act, organised by the Department of Health and Family Welfare, in association with the Department of Information and the District Legal Services Authority, at the SDM Medical College here on Monday.

Mr. Rao said that female foeticide led to a steep decline in the female population, which in turn resulted in a serious imbalance in the male to female ratio as evident from the recent census report. If it continued, society would face serious social problems, he said. Hubli-Dharwad Police Commissioner K. Ramchandra Rao said that as per a survey conducted by an international organisation, every year 100 million females went missing across the world, of which, 30 million were reported missing in India. He said that female foeticide was rampant in Tamil Nadu. Infant girls were being killed largely in States such as Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Madhya Pradesh. But, complaints were not being filed as doctors, the mothers and family members were involved, he said. Principal District and Sessions judge K. Natarajan presided over the programme. http://www.indianexpress.com/news/From-Kolhapur--UP-borrows-idea-device-and-software-to-save-girl-child/943325/

From Kolhapur, UP borrows idea, device and software to save girl child
Witnessing an alarming rate of decline in the sex ratio in various districts of Uttar Pradesh, the state government is planning to replicate Maharashtra governments pilot project that was implemented in Kolhapur district three years ago. The project will be implemented in UP through National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) and will help the state government in tracing ultrasound centres that determine the gender of the foetus, thereby flouting the PreConception & Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PCPNDT) Act. Titled Save The Girl Child, the project has been approved by the governing Body of the NRHM and has been included in the draft of States Project Implementation Plan of NRHM for the year 2012-13, which has been sent to the Government of India for approval, said Mukesh Kumar Meshram, Mission Director (NRHM, UP). The project will be taken up in ten-worst affected districts of the state where the sex ratio has declined drastically in the last one decade, said Meshram. (See Box) The government has proposed a budget of Rs 4 crore to implement the project. The most important part of the project is a tracking device, called Active Tracker, which will now be attached to each of the ultrasound machines in these ten districts. The tracker is a tamper proof device whose basic function is to record all the videos of the ultrasound machine on a real-time basis. The manufacturer of this device, Magnum Opus, is a Pune-based firm, which pioneered Save The Girl Child initiative in collaboration with the Kolhapur district administration in Maharashtra three years ago. Four types of evidences that can help the implementing agencies to nail down a culprit flouting the PCPNDT Act includes the statement of the mother, the statement of the referral doctor, the video of the sonography

and the details of form F it has the details of the patient including the medico-technical data. Apart from the video, all the remaining three evidences can be tampered with, explained Girish Lad, Managing Director, Magnum Opus. Even though the Act asks the ultrasound centres to maintain a minimum record for up to two years, most of the centers do not keep that record because the older USG machines do not have any memory to store the videos, whereas the memory in the new machines can be tampered with, said Lad. Though the videos themselves cannot tell whether the doctor determined the sex of the foetus or not, the videos corroborate the evidences against the culprit, said Lad. For example, we were able to nail down a culprit when in a 13 minutes video of a 12 week foetus, the doctor focused on the genitals for nine minutes and the pregnancy was terminated following the sonography under some other pretence, he said. Another issue for implementation of PCPNDT Act, said Lad, is false reporting, where the form F is many a times half completed or wrongly filled. To check this, the project has an online software that makes it mandatory for all practising gynaecologists, radiologists with a registered USG machine and authorised centres for Medically Terminated Pregnancies (MTP) to fill up forms under PCPNDT Act and MTP Act respectively. The online form cannot be completed unless all the fields are filled up. Further, it cannot be tampered at a later stage and can be used for cross reference of a case to check if the data is filled in correctly, said Lad. After the success of Kolhapur districts, around six districts in Maharashtra, one in Gujarat and three in Haryana have started similar projects to implement the PCPNDT Act and curb female foeticide, said Lad. Witnessing an alarming rate of decline in the sex ratio in various districts of Uttar Pradesh, the state government is planning to replicate Maharashtra governments pilot project that was implemented in Kolhapur district three years ago. What is an Active Tracker? Its a tamper-proof device that will be attached to each of the ultrasound machines It gets switched on every time the ultrasound machine is switched on It will record all the videos taken by the machine on a real-time basis It has a memory of 1 terabyte to store all the videos It is enabled with GPRS that allows the control room to generate a data log for the number of hours the tracker was switched on as well as the number of videos saved in it. Both the data help the authorities in immediately tracing any tampering attempts. http://www.hindustantimes.com/Punjab/Chandigarh/Girl-child-cash-sop-indowry-storm/SP-Article1-848340.aspx

Girl child cash sop in dowry storm

The National Advisory Council (NAC) has cast serious doubts on the government's cash-incentive scheme to check female foeticide and correct India's skewed sex ratio, saying the money given out under the plan is indirectly promoting dowry. The Centre and 13 states have been offering cash

incentives to poor families with the twin aim of saving the girl child and supporting her after she turns 18. The scheme was introduced after the 2001 census showed the child sex ratio had dipped to 927 girls for 1,000 boys. But according to the NAC, the scheme has failed to check this dipping number that now stands at 914 for 1,000 boys, the lowest since Independence. "Giving lump sum cash when the girls turn 18 or 21 may be perceived as a subliminal message in favour of the practice of giving dowry," an NAC working group jointly headed by Farah Naqvi and AK Shiva Kumar said. The NAC, which is headed by UPA chief Sonia Gandhi, did not rule out the possibility of parents using the money on their daughter's marriage and dowry instead of education. While Punjab and Delhi offer Rs. 1 lakh to the girl child, Madhya Pradesh gives Rs. 1.18 lakh. The money is deposited in a government or a post-office account opened in the name of the girl child at the time of birth. They can withdraw it after they turn 18. "There's a need for systematic evaluation before such schemes are promoted as a centre piece of fighting declining sex ratio," it said.

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/kt-article-display-1.asp? section=editorschoice&xfile=/data/editorschoice/2012/April/editorschoice_A pril31.xml Drastic steps to put an end to foeticide Mahesh Trivedi (Gujarat Goings-on) / 30 April 2012 A 36-year-old woman in Ahmedabad recently turned a whistleblower after she was forced to go for abortion as many as six times by her in-laws after sex determination tests would show that she would deliver a girl. Amisha Bhatt, who has filed a case against her husband and in-laws for harassment, came to know through the RTI that greedy doctors maintained a secret list of patients sent by in-laws for abortions, and this list was never revealed to the state government. Bhatt, who found out that her name also did not figure in the list of patients who had undergone sonography tests, has exposed a nexus between gynaecologists and sonography clinics involved in sex determination tests and illegal abortions. Urban areas in Gujarat have fast been emerging as centres of foeticide, with Mehsana in the north recording a gender ratio as low as 845 girls per 1,000 boys, much lower than both the state (886) and national averages (914). No wonder, the Gujarat government has now decided to adopt an advanced technique that uses Active Tracker (AT) a GPS- and GPRS-enabled device that promises to bring transparency in sonography to curb sex determination and ultimately female foeticide. The AT records sonography data and sends it to the central monitoring unit in the district collectorate office. If the AT is removed by the doctor, the device automatically sends an alert to the central monitoring unit. This

prevents a doctor from misusing the sonography machine to carry out sexdetermination test without drawing attention. Officials say that the data from AT is admissible in court. Legal and criminal proceedings can be initiated against the erring doctors. The technology will initially be implemented in Mehsana, infamous for a shamefully low sex ratio, before it is made mandatory for all the 4,000 sonography clinics in the state. But the local doctors have already protested against the move. According to doctors owning the 100-odd sonography clinics in the town, hurried adoption of the technology will do more harm than good. They say that with just one company that has come up with such a device, the local administration should have done more homework, and that a pilot test of the product is essential before they take it up. Even former president of the Indian Radiological and Imaging Association Dr Harshad Shah, said the device breached medical ethics as privacy of patients was compromised, especially in case of male and non-pregnant female patients examined using imaging machinery. However, some doctors have expressed their willingness to use the tracker and extend their support in tracking the errant doctors who conduct sex determination tests on the sly. Time and again, Chief Minister Narendra Modi has in his speeches urged various communities to end female foeticide, stressing that the birth of a girl child should be a matter of pride for the family. But his appeals seem to have fallen on deaf ears. http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-0430/books/31506432_1_women-writers-short-story-publishing-industry

'More women stepping out to write'

An increasing number of women are now stepping out in the world of literature to shape up the voiceof feminist authors, feel well-known women authors and publishers. "As a feminist publisher, I find it interesting to see more and more women willing to write. We often talk if there's 'women's writing' in India, but on seeing writers coming up with ideas on all sorts of issues, it's great," said Urvashi Butalia, director and co-founder of publishing house Kali for Women.