I was watching this debate on television, "should gender pre-determinisim be allowed for parents of would be children?".....
Background : In rural parts of India, culturally, we still tend to prefer a baby boy to a baby girl. Why? Well....for a variety of reasons. One of them is that the hindu scriptures suggest that begetting a son is the easiest way to open the gates of Moksha (liberation).....A son is needed to light your cremation pyre.....Two, a girl tends to be a social obligation, since in our idiotic dogmatic society, the girl's family takes care of not only the entire cost of her marriage, but also gifts her wealth during marriage (dowry).
Given, these two social pressures, in parts where this choice is pre-dominant, there is a tendency to abort female feoteuses, and to kill girl babies as soon as they are born (genocide).
Its for these, starting 1996 (or so I think!!) India has banned gender determination pre-birth for the baby. Female genocide is still at an all time high, probably higher (since now you only discover its a girl after she is born, instead of aborting her earlier). There are still about 700 females for every 1000 females across the nation.
Look, I get the social and cultural ramifications.....and I am all pro-choice, anti-female genocide (I would personally love to have 4 daughters, if I could...)
Yet ....?
I hate the crack-jack bunny government trying to control market dyanmics. What the government should do is come down harshly on those committ genocide...it should incentivise people to have daughters......it should educate people more (illiteracy is big cause for this problem).
Banning sex determinism is not a solution. This is exactly what happened in the 80s, in a bid to avoid population growth, Sanjay Gandhi went about forcibly neutering males so that they could not longer sire children.
We are a banana republic.....and I am not at all proud of it.
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