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.