MP Woman Tortured By Family For Birthing Girl: When Will India Accept Its Daughters?

A young woman in Madhya Pradesh was allegedly tortured and assaulted with a hot iron rod by her husband and his family for giving birth to a daughter. As per a PTI report, the incident took place on March 16 at a local village. The incident came to light after her parents helped her approach the police and a case was filed. Some accused were apprehended while a search is reportedly on to capture the rest.

It seems like we're living in a state of dystopia, a broken reality, where strides in women empowerment co-exist with an appalling anti-female attitude that much of our country still subscribes to. The fanaticism for son preference in India is so high that we are ready to even resort to violence that ends in murder.

In 2020, a man in Ranchi reportedly strangled his baby daughter to death since he didn't want a girl. Last year, the body of a newborn girl was found in a toilet flush at a medical college in Thanjavur; the body is said to have been brought from outside to be dumped there since the college doesn't have a maternity ward.

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How can young girls growing up into the women of tomorrow feel at all safe in a country where people still deny their worth? When will we see a shift in general public consciousness that puts boys before girls? And for what? That we put the bulk of our family-building, nation-building, success-building responsibility on our boys?

When will we understand that girls too are equally capable of achieving all those dreams, if only they are given the opportunity?

Female infanticide is a crime under Indian law and yet, cases of either mothers being tortured for producing girls or girls being killed at birth haven't ceased to exist. As per the United Nations' State of World Population 2020, India disappointingly accounted for 45.8 million of the world's 142.6 million 'missing females' over the past half-century. 'Missing females' is calculated through the sex ratio of a population, linked to practices like sex determination or foeticide that affect females disproportionately.

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The problem and its warped solution, both have been created by us.

In its aversion for women, what society fails to recognise is that it is we who have put ourselves into boxes, a design orchestrated by &t=156s">patriarchy's male-dominant tendencies. Who says women cannot perform as well or even better than men in success? To secure financial futures, families in India want sons and thus justify discarding their girls. But why don't we put our trust in girls and give them equal opportunities to perform, to see just how well they do?

Give us resources for education, for employment, for independence, for empowerment and see the soaring success we deliver with them. Don't turn us away before we have even had a chance to show you what we're made of.

Views expressed are the author's own.