Wombs in Punjab are now in news for another reason. So far they have been in the spotlight for becoming tombs for the girl-child; now a recent article in ToI reports Punjab as the leading destination for surrogacy in India.

Surrogacy refers to an arrangement whereby a woman agrees to become pregnant for the purpose of gestating and giving birth to a child for others to raise. She may be the child’s genetic mother (traditional  surrogacy)  or  she  may  be  implanted  with  someone else’s fertilised egg (gestational surrogacy). [Pande, 2009]

Earlier, it was the city of Anand in Gujarat that had been identified as the leading destination for commercial surrogacy in India. Now, as per the ToI report, Punjab has more surrogacy cases than Gujarat. Both Gujarati and Punjabi communities are prosperous north-Indian communities and have a large population living abroad that might be instrumental in spreading the word about ‘fertile’ conditions for surrogacy in the respective states (cheap ‘labor’ and IVF costs: costs one-tenth of what it costs in the West). What is interesting about Gujarat and Punjab becoming leading destinations for commercial surrogacy in India is that both these states are also infamous for female-feticide.

In India, decisions regarding both surrogacy and sex-selective abortion are greatly influenced by social pressures. Surrogacy in India is equated with sex-work, as ‘dirty’ workers [Pande, 2009]; to avoid the stigma, surrogate mothers often spend the last few months of pregnancy in seclusion. They return to their village after the delivery or later explain away the pregnancy as miscarriage. In the case of sex-selective abortions, the social preference to have sons drives the decision to abort female fetuses in the case of feticide or to kill the girl-child as in the case of infanticide. Activists, on the one hand, are seeking to remove the stigma associated with ‘commercial surrogacy’ in favor of women’s reproductive rights, and, on the other hand, are seeking to stigmatize the practice of sex-selective abortions to prevent discrimination against the girl-child.

Technology plays an important role in providing conducive conditions to both these phenomena: Surrogacy is helped by advances in “infertility and assisted reproductive technologies  like  IVF,  test  tube  babies,  intrauterine  insemination, embryo freezing, endoscopic surgery and sonography.” Also, technology such as ultrasonography, amniocentesis, gender-testing kits that can be ordered through mail and used at home have made it easier to determine sex of the fetus.

Moral debate about surrogacy is not the topic of this posting. In this post, I could not help but wonder how these two womb-related phenomena of birth and abortion guided by economic and social pressures will play out in Punjab and the Punjabi community. Will one phenomenon affect the other? If so, in what ways?

Amrita Pande (2009)  Not an ‘Angel’, not a ‘Whore’: Surrogates as ‘Dirty’ workers in India. Indian Journal of Gender Studies.  16 (2)

Punjab has launched the country’s first hotline to deal with public health issues in general but specifically with an eye on the alarming rate of female feticide in the state.

Some information about the Community Hotline Service (from the report in Chandigarh Tribune):

1. The service was launched on Oct 08, 2009 as a pilot project in Punjab as part of the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM)
   

   Hotline - 4005252

2. it is a 9 am to 6 pm telephone service
3. caller has to dial 4005252 and follow the instructions
4. in the instructions, the first 3 of the 4 options are related to the female feticide issue.
5. the service gives residents an opportunity to get their grievances and suggestions registered as regards health services in the state.
6. the call made to this number is kept anonymous. “No one can know who is calling till the caller chooses to identify himself or herself.”

A much needed initiative. Now, the next step is to ensure that this information reaches all those who might need to make that call.

Where there is a demand, there will be a supply.

If there are markets with people who badly want a male offspring, there will be marketeers who offer solutions to conceive a male offspring. Depending on the clients – that is, the size of their brains and size of their pockets – the solutions may vary. From prayers, talismans, visits to shrines, certain rituals, specific days favorable for conception (based on astrology), to more ’scientific’ solutions such as specific diets, ‘medicines’, and genetics based procedures.

Yesterday, The Star ran a story about such a demand and supply scenario in an area west of Toronto. A marketeer places an advt in a Punjabi newspaper printed in Mississauga: “A guaranteed and satisfactory medicine for having a son is available.” A female reporter poses as a 9-weeks pregnant Punjabi woman wanting a male offspring. She contacts the advertiser for the medicine. The advertiser, who it turns out is the news editor of that newspaper – (Did he pay for the ad?) – gives her three ziploc bags with some pills:

Take two red and brown pills each day for a week … and your baby has an 85 per cent chance of being a boy. Then he demands $750 in cash. … “There’s no 100 per cent guarantee,” he said in an earlier conversation by phone. He offered to give the number of a Brampton clinic to check the sex of the fetus after 12 weeks of pregnancy. “Then you can think about what you want to do. If it’s a girl, (whether) you want to keep her or not,” he said. “You know … what you want to do is your decision.”

Whereas nationally in Canada there are more women than men, the numbers in the Asian community in Canada do not follow the same pattern. In the Toronto area, the ratio becomes much more skewed:

917 girls to 1,000 boys in the Toronto Central Metropolitan Area. Broken down further, it shows 904 girls to 1,000 boys in Mississauga, and 864 girls to 1,000 boys in Brampton.

Well, either the advertised red, brown and silver pills seem to working in these heavily Punjabi populated towns of Mississauga and Brampton, leading to more boys than girls in those populations, or then female fetuses are going missing.

It is elementary,  my dear Watson.  Doesn’t take a Sherlock Holmes to arrive at what might be happening there.

Where there is a demand, there will be a supply.

The date: Sept 24. Two news reports. Two events. Two affected parties. One issue: female feticide.  One report was on girls campaigning to stop female feticide. The other on youths campaigning to get brides. I was caught between the weirdness of funny and remorse until I did not know any longer whether to laugh or cry.

The first was an event in Lucknow where scores of young girls and their mothers took out a procession in the city to mark the Girl Child Day on Thursday. The girls were asking people to stop the social discrimination and change their negative attitudes towards girl child. No laughing matter this.

The second was in Haryana’s Jind district where jobless youths from Kunwara Union launched a campaign with the slogan ‘bahu do vote lo’, (give us a bride, and get our votes). Haryana is one of the states with the lowest female-to-male ratio in the country. Ahead of the legislative assembly elections, the youths were drawing the attention of the state politicians towards the problems they are facing due to dearth of brides in the state. Rather than asking for employment (or other poll gifts), they are opting to ask for brides.

Let us allow ourselves a laugh before the government declares the shortage of brides as a state of emergency.

Set to release next week, on October 2, Akhiyan Udeekdiyan is a new Punjabi film that, as per the filmmakers’ claim, takes on the issue of female feticide in Punjab. Some info about the film:

Title: Akhiyan Udeekdiyan
Director:  Mukesh Gautam
Producers:  Gaurav Baga / Davinder K Bobby
Actors: Lakhwinder Wadali; Roshni Singh; Guggu Gill; Sudesh Lahri

“In the film, a mother decides to give birth to a baby girl, bearing all odd ends and pressure from various quarters to abort the baby. She wins this battle by giving birth to a talented girl child, but sacrifices her own life.”

(I will update this post as and when we get more information about the film. And thereafter with the reviews.)

Uh Oh! A closer scrutiny reveals some darker aspects of the earlier good news regarding the positive change in Delhi’s female-to-male sex-ratio. I covered the good part in an earlier post. To summarize it here, the female to male sex-ratio in Delhi increased to 1004:1000 in 2008 from a dismal 905:1000 in 2001.

That was the good part. Now for the bad part.  Questions continue to be raised about interpreting the numbers. Does it mean that people not belonging to Delhi are registering births in Delhi because of the financial incentive being provided by the Delhi govt to the family of the girl-child under the Ladli scheme? If this is the case, then the numbers might be misleading and even distorting the facts. Plus, there are doubts whether “the dramatic improvement in sex ratio is actually an indication of a decrease in female feticide or simply underregistration of male births.”

But here’s the ugly part. When the sex-ratio of 1004:1000 was broken down by religion, it revealed a religious bias. As per a TOI report, “While the sex ratio at birth in Hindus and Muslims is 1,002 females per 1,000 males and 1,040 females per 1,000 males respectively, for Sikhs and Christians it is still languishing at 873 and 875, respectively.”

The Sikh community is generally seen as a prosperous community, with most of it falling above the ambit of the low income scale that a family needs to be in to avail of the financial incentives of Ladli.

Earlier studies have shown that prosperous sections of the Indian society, irrespective of religion, have a low female-to-male sex ratio as compared with the poorer sections of the society. What incentives can be employed to change the mindset of the prosperous where the problem is more acute?

A highlight from a meeting today between Punjab State Commission for Women and officers from the Health & Family Welfare Department was a tabling of the following observation:

• Towards correcting the adverse sex ratio in Punjab, Health and Family Welfare Department utilized only 12.7 per cent of the funds provided under the National Rural Health Mission. This was during the year 2007-08.
• The following year, 2008-09, only 33.9 per cent NHRM funds were utilized.

Funds are available. The purpose for which the funds are available is important and urgent. Somebody better start spending that money soon. And should the department need suggestions on how to utilize the money, let me count the ways …

An article in Indian Express today reported a turnaround in the low female to male ratio in Delhi.

In 2001, the sex ratio was 905 :  1000 [based on the 2001 Census]

In 2007, the sex ratio at birth was 848 : 1000 [cited in this article]

In 2008, the sex ratio at birth was 1004 : 1000 [based on births reported by Chief Registrar - Births and Deaths, Delhi]

How credible are these numbers? What accounts for this turnaround? Expect to hear discussions and arguments around these questions over the next few days in the media.

And the consequences of female-feticide gather mass …

Yet another case in the news yesterday that draws attention to shortage of brides. In Haryana, families are getting into a ‘barter system’: if a family has a daughter and son, then the family, while fixing a match for their daughter, ensures that her to be in-laws have a girl in their immediate or extended family for their son. The girl is a minor? No problem.

The article reports the case of one man Nathu in Fatehabad, Haryana, engaged to Geeta while his sister is engaged to Geeta’s maternal-uncle. It turns out Geeta is a minor and police intervenes to halt the wedding. Geeta’s family now has to get a replacement for Geeta else the maternal-uncle’s wedding to Nathu’s sister is threatened. So Geeta’s family brings in Geeta’s cousin Savitri. Turns out that Savitri too is a minor and the police intervenes yet again. The resourceful family then scurries around frantically seeking a replacement and manages to find a 20yr old in the extended family for Nathu. All are smiles. Seems that had it not been able to get a girl for Nathu, the maternal-uncle would not have been able to marry Nathu’s sister.

The article also notes that the barter system, which was earlier restricted to the Bishnoi community, is now being adopted by Jat families too. But barter marriages are not a new concept to the Punjabi community either. There seems to be a difference though. Whereas the reported barter system in Haryana seeks to work around the low female to male sex ratio and the shortage of brides, barter marriages in the Punjabi community seems to be working around immigration issues. An article in a Canadian newspaper reprints a matrimonial ad:

Jat Sikh Canadian immigrant boy 29, 5′3″ seeks an Indian educated girl. Only those families should contact who can provide Canadian matrimonial alliance for his 33-year-old Indian resident brother, 5′5″.

It is likely that the community might soon see the message “I’ll get your son/daughter to Canada, you help get my niece/nephew out of India” changing to “I’ll get your son/nephew married, you help get my son/nephew get married”.

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[Satta watta is the term in Pakistan for barter marriages. For a different take on this issue, you can download a paper here in which the authors empirically show that "watta satta may be a mechanism to coordinate the actions of two sets of in-laws, each of whom wish to restrain their sons-in-law but who only have the ability to restrain their sons. ... The likelihood of marital inefficiency, as measured by estrangement, domestic abuse, and wife's mental health, is significantly lower in watta satta arrangements as compared with conventional marriages, but only after properly accounting for selection."]

I can’t help but be amused by Akal Takht’s recent denouncement of gay marriages. Amused not because of the religion versus homosexuality tussle, which is an age old issue, but because of relationship-related matters afflicting the Sikh community. Let me explain.

Akal Takht, the supreme Sikh body, has made its position clear: It will not let Gurdwaras solemnize gay marriages.The vociferous statement was fired in as a quick response to the Delhi High Court’s recent judgment that decriminalized homosexuality in the country. The Jathedar opined that the court’s judgment “will ruin the society” and Sikhs “should refrain from establishing gay relationships.” The sexuality issue draws attention to the larger gender issues endemic in the society. Here is my cause for amusement.

Given the alarming rate of female feticide and the low female to male ratio in Punjab, it is only a matter of time before the community runs out of brides for their grooms. The present times are already witnessing an onset of this situation, a ’shortage’ of brides. So given such a state-of-affairs, what are the prospective grooms gonna do? Three options immediately jump to mind. The grooms could:

1. Marry outside the community. However, this would again lead to an erosion of religious beliefs and practices. I can’t see Akal Takht pleased with that.
2. Remain single. But then Sikhism strongly advocates living a ‘grehasti jeevan’ or a house holder’s life. So by remaining single the Sikh bachelors would be leading lives that would not be consonant with Sikh principles.
3. Get into relationships with each other. But Akal Takht is against gay relationships and will not allow Gurdwaras to solemnize gay marriages. So this too would have it frowning again.

Ha ha. That would indeed leave Akal Takht in limbo, won’t it? Or perhaps, it is a signal to the community that there’s no easy way getting out of the hole it has been digging itself into: For all the lost female fetuses, the chickens are coming home to roost.

[update: I have received a couple of emails rightly taking me to task for the option #3 I suggested above. I agree that the point misrepresents homosexuality as a matter of choice, but I hope that the lightheartedness of this post does not belie the gravity of the issue of female feticide.

Also, in some earlier posts I do have acknowledged the role of Akal Takht speaking out against female feticide. However, the intensity of those efforts pale in comparison with that displayed in coming out against the Delhi Court's verdict.]