In 1970, the Chinese government officially restricted families to adopt the ‘One Child Policy’ under which any couple can carry only one infant into their family as per the law. This was introduced to shrink the expanding population of the country that now holds about 1.3 billion citizens.
More than 25 years later, China has successfully implemented the decree but only at the cost of their future generations. One thing that the makers of the regulation failed to see was that this policy, although having good intentions as its basis, will lead to a gender gap so huge that by 2020, an approximate of 40 million Chinese men will not be able to find indigenous brides. The root of the problem is an imbalanced gender ratio which now puts only 100 females to every 118 males in the country. The typical ratio should be actually 103-106 males for every 100 females. In the poorer regions of the Nation, the ratio is even bad.
The reason for such ratio is because of male child preferences by the population of China. The parents choose a male child because of the obvious reasons for social security and continuance of the patriarchal line. A boy can go out and earn them bread and butter when they are themselves too weak to feed themselves. A girl, on the other hand, is a liability. Due to this very fact, thousands of girls were either abandoned or killed following the implementation of the scheme in the 1970s. Although not adopting such extreme measures, still believes in the boy child is better than girl child. The urban areas have overcome the obstacle, with parents now looking at girls no less than the boys, but in the rural area’s gender-selective abortion has shown to form ‘bachelor villages’ where there are much more males to females created due to 90% of females being passed away in the womb.
This skewed ratio has called for a bigger problem than the government might realize. Chinese men are now ‘buying’ their way into a betrothal. The cost of cuddling comes up to even 5000 USD sometimes, around 3.3 lakh rupees. For those who cannot find such amounts, they turn to smuggling brides as a desperate measure. Cambodian, Vietnamese, and other Asian girls are being now trafficked across borders in order to fill up the exhausting supply for an ever increasing demand for brides. Young girls, as small as 13 years old, have been taken to villages where men can pick them up according to their sale prices.
In India, although the taking of money works in the reverse, where the parents of the bride pay the groom to marry her aka the dowry, it seems like it might not take a lot for the situation to reverse. The root of this problem is the cultural similarity in India and China. Both the countries show a preference for a male child. But unlike China, there is no government rule that limits the number of children. In India, the important constraint is economic stability, which means a big fat dowry, huge arrangements for marriage. The cultural aspect to this is the saying that to attain moksha (heavenly abode,) only a son will have the rights to cremate a father.It is also seen in India that girls are temporary– as they get married and shift to their in-laws. The common expression in India is “bringing up a daughter is like watering a neighbor’s plants.’ It will drain your water but will be of no use to the family that waters.
Though there are many laws in India that help protect women, it is all in vain. Under the Dowry Prohibition Act of 1961, in India, it is illegal to take or give dowry, yet this is a common practice. Also, another law passed in 1994 prohibits the use of amniocentesis and sonogram tests for gender determination, however, they are still widely used and followed, which is also leading to an increase in female infanticide. Every year in India, according to statistics provided by the government, seven million abortions take place. In these seven million, three million abortions are of the female child. Also of the 11 million abandoned babies in India, 90 percent are girls.
A report released by the Government shows the decreasing female child population in India as well. In 2001, there were 78.83 million girl children in India, whereas in 2011 it reduced to 75.84 million. This meant that the population of the girl child in 2001 was 15% of the total population of the Indian sub-continent, whereas it reduced to 12.9 percentage in 2011. Another study showed off the children that were malnourished, 71% were girl children and 28% were male children.
The gender ratio in our country is presently at 930 females to 1000 males. And with the current abortion rate, if the trend followed in India will be to follow China’s footsteps and import brides from other countries. This would be a sad situation as India is allegedly a land woven by women– and this cannot be forgiven.
