(Arjun Soin is in Class 12 at Modern School, Barakhamba Road, New Delhi. He is the founder of the interactive teen website www.voiceofteenindia.com)
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A deserted street in her village was her first cradle. She could have well have been run over by a vehicle. But destiny had ordained otherwise. Her cries carried to a kind ear. She was to become the only ray of hope for scores of abandoned girls like herself who were left to die by their parents. She reared these babies in her own home - 'Unique Home' in Delhi. Prakash Kaur is simply 'mother' to her 68 adopted 'daughters' who have never known any other parent.
After volunteering with underprivileged children (with the NGOs Khushi and Salaam Baalak), teenaged girls in a slum area (with the NGO Ummeed) and researching an internship project in a village where gender inequality emerged as a rampant social malady, I was keen to connect with an organization that promised holistic rehabilitation of abandoned female babies. My search ended with Unique Home (a registered NGO that fosters abandoned girls). And with Prakash Kaur.
Prakash wakes up at 5 am to cook
rotis for all her daughters and gets the little ones ready for school. Her elder daughters help their younger 'sisters' to do the same. There are children playing in the garden. A focus on educating (girl) children to pursue a vocation or chase their professional dreams: the home is picture-perfect.
Stop before you make Prakash yet another victim of the monotonous line of thought - another matron in another orphanage supporting homeless children. Spare a thought instead, for the magnitude of the cause and the enormity of her effort. In developed economies, the sex ratio is 103 males to 100 females. The figures in India are rather disturbing. While the average figure for the country is 115/100, it is 120/100 in North India and as skewed as 135/100 in some backward areas. But here's the shocker: it's been getting worse since 1991.
While illiteracy, patriarchal systems and economic factors are often blamed, they are only a part of the story. Politically incorrect as it may sound, I believe that an unfortunate national trait - hypocrisy - often clouds rational thinking. The ubiquitousness of it in our society makes me seethe. I will give three illustrative examples.
Take for instance, the custodians of religious shrines: they on one hand, sermonize ad nauseam on how the blessings of Saraswati could fill our lives with wisdom and knowledge or those of Laxmi with boundless wealth, but on the other, they do not flinch giving divine advice on how to ensure the birth of a son! Isn't it ironic that in our country where goddesses are worshiped, there are 1 million female foeticide annually?
Consider another example: that of a well-heeled urban couple who would transgress all moral and legal boundaries to get that 'boy' report on the pregnancy ultrasound. Little wonder then, that illegal sex determination before birth and sex selection is a 2000 crore (300 million USD) industry in India!
My third subject is the self-righteous mother-in-law taunting her daughter-in-law for not giving the family a son - a common scenario in India across all sections of society. I cannot even begin to comprehend how she can live with herself for doing this. The persecution does not end here. Hundreds of thousands of girl children are abandoned/trafficked annually in India, with as many as 45,000 in Punjab alone. The gender bias in education is even more glaring. The sex ratio among children in rural primary schools is 178/100, and secondary schools 300/100.
Voice-of-teen-India recently launched an online campaign called BETI BHI JIYEGI to support the cause of the girl child in India. We targeted a collection of 5,00,000 rupees (128,500 already collected) to be able to support the education and subsistence of 10 girl children for 1 year at Unique Home.
I thought it was appropriate to run this campaign on a teen website as no one would identify better with the dreams and aspirations of children (girls) than us (teenagers).
While you may (rightly) think Prakash Kaur's efforts or this campaign are a drop in the ocean, let's take a cue from the 'I am Anna' movement of 2011. It's the closest thing to a national movement that I have seen in my 17 years. While the methods may have been extreme, the anti-corruption theme certainly struck a chord, cutting across religious, economic, gender and age barriers. The correction of the adverse sex ratio and rescuing the girl child needs nothing short of a similar herculean effort, a national movement; in fact, a revolution.
A revolution is nothing but a collective will to change. Join the revolution. Be the change. Be Prakash Kaur.
Please note: The campaigns mentioned in this blog are now closed.
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