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India to offer cash bonus for bringing up baby girls
Wed, Mar 05, 2008 The Straits Times
NEW DELHI - INDIA is offering to pay poor families nearly US$3,000 (S$4,200) to bring up daughters. It hopes to discourage the widespread practice of aborting female foetuses, which has led to a skewed gender balance in parts of the country. Staggered payments would be made to families to 'encourage them for better upbringing of a girl child and to educate her', Women and Child Development Minister Renuka Chowdhury said in a statement released on Monday. The tragedy of being born a girl in India has been well documented. The sex ratio in India was 945 female to 1,000 male babies in 1991. This declined to 927:1,000 in 2001.

Many families prefer boys, regarded as future breadwinners, to girls, on whom dowries have to be spent to find husbands.

The government hopes a cash incentive will change that.

The government will pay 15,500 rupees (S$530) to poor families in phases, with a lump sum of 100,000 rupees when the girl reaches the age of 18, provided she meets criteria including education, immunisation and nutrition, and she is not married.

The government will spend 100 million rupees in the next year to kickstart the scheme, which will benefit more than 100,000 girls, the minister said.

'We will start the project shortly,' Ms Chowdhury said, adding that it would be rolled out in seven states where discrimination against girls is most acute. India has already implemented a number of schemes to encourage social and economic empowerment of women, but Ms Chowdhury said she was confident that the new cash-driven policy would work better.

However, some experts questioned whether the cash incentive would have any effect. Wealthier cities, with a high proportion of better-educated people, have the worst sex ratios.

'It is the urban middle classes who can also afford the ultrasound tests to determine the sex of the foetus,' said Ms Sabu George, a campaigner against female foeticide.

'That is really the problem. The poor are copying the behaviour of the richer people in India.

'What we have not seen stop is that technology is more and more available and that every small town now has a doctor who will illegally test your baby's sex and abort it for a fee.'

The government is considering handing out life penalties to doctors convicted of such an offence.

REUTERS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

Skewed ratio

India loses almost 7,000 girls every day through abortions, Unicef says.