Tribal couple hand over baby girl to ICDS staff

Efforts to bridge gap in child sex ratio not yielding any result in Nalgonda. ccording to Census-2011,the Samsthan Narayanapur mandal is having just 833/1000 sex ratio in 0-6 years of age group.

May 23, 2014 09:47 pm | Updated 09:48 pm IST - NALGONDA:

Efforts to bridge increasing gap in child sex ratio in 0-6 years age group are not yielding any result in the district. A tribal woman from Samsthan Narayanapur mandal, which has the lowest sex ratio among the 0-6 age group children in the district, handed over the just born baby girl to staff of ICDS at Sishgurha on Thursday.

According to supervisor of ICDS, Samsthan Narayanapur mandal, Vinodini, a tribal woman from Mellachervu Tanda, delivered a baby girl on May 19. Since the day of birth, the woman and her kin have decided to abandon the girl when the ICDS supervisor approached them and counselled them but in vain.

“Having two girl children earlier, the tribal woman told the ICDS staff that they are not in a position to raise another girl because her husband, the sole bread winner, works on a bore well rig for eking out livelihood. The woman handed over the girl with the consent of her husband. Shockingly, the couple have decided not to go for family planning operation even after this incident and they still want to try their luck to give birth for a boy next time. When the counselling ICDS staff questioned, what if she delivers another baby girl, the woman has told them without any hesitation that she would again drop the girl at Sishugruha.

According to Census-2011,the Samsthan Narayanapur mandal is having just 833/1000 sex ratio in 0-6 years of age group. The number was down by 124 compared to 2001 census and much lesser than district sex ratio 921/1000 in the age group of 0-6 years. The staff at Nalgonda Sishugruha told The Hindu , at least six couples from Samsthan Narayanpur had handed over baby girls to them which stands an example for the disinterest of people from this area to raise the girls.

The administration had taken an initiative to improve the social indicators including sex ratio a few months ago through Mana Kosam Manam, but these kind of incidents proves the programme has yielded no result.

“The government needs to design a comprehensive programme to arrest the repeat of these kind of incidents in future, unless it would turn a disaster soon,” the local resident said.

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