NRIs approach ultrasound clinics in Punjab to find boy or girl

 

Punjabi NRIs too killing girls
Chandigarh, Aug. 17, 2007
Khushwant Singh, TNN
Economictimes/indiatimes

Here’s the ugly face of the globalising Indian. The hostility to the girl child that’s such a tragic feature of life in India doesn’t abate even abroad. Or so it would seem, if advertisements for sex determination tests in newspapers aimed at expatriate Punjabis are any indication.

One such newspaper ad made available to TOI asks: Munda-ya-kudi ? (boy or girl?). In another, a clinic in the US has given out a toll-free number for couples to take tests, giving them the option of abortion if the child expected is a girl.

The dark side of these NRIs approaching Punjab-based ultrasound clinics for conducting sex-determination tests is that in faraway Surrey, Canada — where a majority of the Punjabi immigrants live — a deviation in male-female ratio has already been reported.

The Punjabi intolerance for the female child thus seems to have assumed global proportions. Back home, this hatred of the girl child has already given Punjab one of the most skewed sex ratios in India — with 874 females per 1,000 males.

Dr Kuldip Singh, former president of the Indian Medical Association (Punjab), told TOI his gynaecologist wife is often approached by visiting NRI couples for sex-determination tests.

‘‘Even though we tell them that sex determination is illegal under the PNDT Act, they insist that we conduct the tests. We have to literally push them out,’’ adds Dr Singh, who is from Hoshiarpur, Punjab. Couples approaching them are mostly from Italy and North America, says Dr Singh.