A news piece managed to disturb me more than any other, today.
‘Girl child sold at a few thousand of Indian Rupee.’
The world is becoming pricier day-by-day, a fact for which you don’t have to read to know. The diminishing weight of the wallet as it approaches the month-end, bears testimony to this reality. Vegetables have become expensive, the poor-old-pulses have had an image shift with price rise, and the harmless movie ticket can do much damage to the monthly budget. The list is expansive.
Yet, one thing, which comes cheap in this expensive time is the life of a baby girl. What a mockery of human existence! A priceless baby girl is available at a price which most of us can afford. The political parties blame each other. Officials belittle it by terming it as a certain illiterate community problem. They go further by stating that these tribal communities give birth to beautiful girls. Hence, they get easy takers among childless couples. Nailing her beauty as her crime, just like they said, she asked for rape. The media features it as breaking news.
And what do we do? We sit in few minutes of shock. Next time, our colleague distributes sweets on becoming a new parent, we never fail to ask ‘Girl or Boy?’ If the answer is latter, we don’t hesitate to pick a second piece from the box, sheepishly commenting ‘Then I can afford to take one more.’ If the answer is first, we console with ‘Never mind, daughters are more caring.’ But the tone says it all.
We are educated, at least we believe to be one. Hence, we completely deny to gender discrimination. A daughter and son are both the same but still it’s natural to say, ‘I have a daughter, need to be careful with money.’ Isn’t it so engrained in us?
No matter how much we worship the Godly form of Shakti and name our women after them, till the time we nurture them, respect is far-fetched. The female gender of the humankind is facing a serious threat of extinction, which is a stark reality in some flourishing villages of the North. It’s time to at least admit to it and not smirk with ‘this doesn’t happen to my society.’ It surely does. Not just in some rural belt but every corner of India.
Pic Courtesy: Google Images
