Should the government give incentives to every girl child that is born?

That is the question being asked on Doctor NDTV. The responses to this are unbelievable. 75% say Yes and only 25% say No.

The reason for asking such a question in the first place could be the Indian attitude toward the girl child. The girl child is disliked as it is considered a burden on the family, as end of the day the girl child has to be married off into someone else’s family by giving a big dowry. The killing of female fetuses & female infants & the thriving illegal sex detection clinics are indications of this fact.

As a result the sex ratio is skewed in favor of men in India. As per the 1991 census number of females per 1000 males is 927. What is more horrifying is the sex ratio in urban India. It is 894 per 1000 males. Strangely it is better in rural India 939 per 1000 males. The only state where the sex ratio is the other way round is in Kerala. The number of females per 1000 males in this southern state is a encouraging 1036. (Source http://www.censusindia.net/fsex.html)

It is important for the government to take certain initiatives to counter this & improve the sex ratio. Although on the face of it the idea of giving incentives sounds convincing, on going deeper into it, a move of that sort could only back fire. The very basis of that thought needs to be questioned here. We are not talking of somebody achieving some target or doing something good, we are talking of the girl child here. Are we saying that we will have girl children in this country who exist not out of love from their parents or relatives but out of some incentive that the government has given? It looks more like one of those marketing gimmicks. Buy one bar of soap & get one bottle of shampoo free. So if we translate that to the topic we are discussing then it would be something like you have a girl child then you get free education for the child.

Also what kind of incentives can the government really give for people to start feeling that the girl child is not a pain? Sponsor the child’s education? Give her a job once she completes a certain age? Give a certain amount of money to the family who has had the girl child? What else can the government possibly do other than these things? The primary reason for the hatred for the girl child as already stated is because of the notion that she is ‘paraya dhan’. How can the government change that?

One of the cons of giving incentives to the girl child is to give a boost to the sex trade. Some two people can get married only to have a female child & then to get the incentives & put the child into the sex trade. Also it could be mired in scams & controversies thus trivializing the very coming into existence of the girl child. And what is the guarantee that the parents after claiming the incentives will not leave the girl child at the entrance of a temple or an orphanage or worse kill the child or dump her in the garbage bin?

Ok if all these things can be taken care of in some form or the other. There is one thing. How is the girl child supposed to feel when she grows up & has the capacity to understand the whole incentive thing? Is she supposed to feel normal when she realizes that she is in existence only because of some incentives that the government gave and not out of any love from her parents to have her?

It is important for the government to deal with this problem. Giving incentives may not be the correct way forward. What is required instead is a long-term measure. Measures like education to the children & their parents, poverty alleviation, good jobs & some strong measures to eradicate the concept of dowry in the system.