Dowry still tends to be a main reason for people not wanting a girl child.
The sex ratio of women in Karnataka has been declining due to cases of female foeticide, according to recent reports from Karnataka’s health department. The department is setting up a task force and formulating a new state policy to bring down the levels of female foeticide. The decline has been consistent over a decade. Prenatal sex selective foeticide, anaemia and malnutrition in women are some of the prominent reasons for this decline Karnataka’s Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said.
Frequent reports of female foeticide cases have surfaced mostly from rural regions. The most recent one was reported yesterday, where a foetus was found dumped in a bin, wrapped in a black plastic bag .
In other reports the discovery of seven aborted foetuses in a drain in Belagavi were mentioned.
A female foeticide crime ring in Karnataka is reported to have a network of criminals that undertake sex determination and abortion. They have a sophisticated network of lab technicians, doctors, receptionist and agents who travel to villages in Mandya and Mysuru, reports said.
The prevalence of such a sophisticated network seems to indicate a lucrative demand for sex selective foeticides in rural areas. Criminals exploit it due to its lucrative potential.
Experts cite many reasons for female foeticide such as the cultural preference for a boy child due to the perception of men as sole financial providers for a household and women as homemakers, confined to domestic roles. But a primary reason can be due to dowry payments.
“Female foeticide is driven by many factors, but primarily by the prospect of having to pay a dowry to the future bridegroom of a daughter,” law professor Nehaluddin Ahmad wrote in his research paper on female foeticide.
According to the professor, women are seen as social and economic burdens by those that commit female foeticide.
Furthermore, dowry related deaths have been increasing according to crime reports from Karnataka, as dowry-related murders had gone up from 10 deaths based on the 2021 year end crime report to 15 deaths in the 2022 year end crime report, with the current reportage of dowry related murders sitting at six murders up until the month of September 2023.
Dowry related deaths don’t seem to be a recent phenomenon. In 2015, dowry expenses was touted as the most common reason for farmer deaths in rural Karnataka by many news publications.
