Will the problem of female infanticide ever be solved?

Sadly, this is a major issue still faced by many policy makers and NGOs of our country.

Rural India

In rural areas where a lot of people do not have access to sex determination facilities, female infanticide is shockingly common. The parents wait until the mother gives birth, and when they find out that a daughter is born, they go ahead and kill the baby by adopting various means such as strangling the baby, giving her poison, dumping her in a garbage bin, drowning her, burying her alive, starving her, stuffing her mouth with salt, or leaving her outdoors overnight so she dies of exposure. What is disturbing is that female infanticide is not considered a big crime and rarely do culprits get convicted. Once in while there is a harsh conviction of the parent followed by some publicity, and it isn't long before the news dies down. Surprisingly, mothers are the ones who often perpetrate the crime, with the support of other women in her network. Since the mother is the one who has given birth to the unwanted female, she is the one who must do away with it. She is forced to do so at times, and willingly does so at others since she herself desires a male child. How much the mother, another victim of atrocities, is really to blame though, is anybody's guess. Where the daughter's life is spared, parents often neglect her and expect her to work around the house serving her brothers and father. Girls are rarely sent to school, and if they are, they are removed after a few years of education and put to work - perhaps sent to cities to work as maids in homes, and send back money earned by them. In all probability, they are treated far better at the homes they work in as maids than they are in their own homes - but instances of harsh ill-treatment and abuse of such girls are also just as common.

Urban India Rural life is far removed from city life. Although we may have come across villagers who perhaps now work under us as office boys, peons, waiters in restaurants, drivers, cooks and household help, rarely do we ever try and bring about a change in their mindset. Sadly though, educated, urban and fairly wealthy people too often nurse a desire for a male child, and although they may not kill their daughter after she is born, they do try and find out the sex of their child, and abort female fetuses. Although disclosing the gender of a foetus is illegal, there are numerous doctors that disclose the child's sex for an enhanced fee, and then offer to arrange for the abortion. Thus although there is a good law in place, its implementation is not as effective as it should be. Although all of us take pride in our Indian culture, we need to recognize that there is something fundamentally wrong with a culture that assumes the superiority of males, and that celebrates Indian women for being meek, submissive and sacrificial. One way you can help counter this mindset is by being proud of the women in your life, and by taking pride in yourself if you are a woman.

Female Infanticide Infant female babies have been killed or left to die because they are female. This practice is called "female infanticide," Every day a baby is killed because it isn't the gender the parents preferred. In third world countries such as India infanticide of females is common. There have been laws outlawing both infanticide and determining the sex of babies if it is not medically necessary, however it still continues. The killing of female babies has led to many ethical and social issues. Infanticide has also lead to an imbalance in the ratio of men to women in India. According to the census of 2001, for every 100 males born there are 105 females born however, most females are killed within 3 days after their birth making the new ratio 93 females for every 100 males. Despite the clear prohibitions against child-murder by all major religions, female infanticide has been for centuries a prominent and socially acceptable event, notably in one of the most populous countries in this world, India. Even today, the extent of the problem is measured in alarming proportions all around the globe: "at least 60 million females in Asia are missing and feared dead, victims of nothing more than their sex. It is clear that the burdensome costs involved with the raising of a girl, eventually providing her an appropriate marriage dowry, was the single most important factor in allowing social acceptance of the murder at birth in India. Nonetheless, in addition to the dowry system, the reasons for this increasing trend have also been attributed to the patriarchal society, poverty and the availability of sex-selective abortion. The practice of female infanticide has taken place throughout the ages and in all types of society.

Dowry system We live in our society. It is made up of different castes and sub-castes. There are different traditions and cultures. Some of them are good, but not all of them. Dowry system is one of the social evils which are in practice till now. Dowry is the property or money given to the bride to take her husband's house when she gets married. This evil system is especially practiced in the terrain of our country. Nowadays dowry is a major factor when someone gets married. The bridegroom's family proposes the amount of dowry. And if the bride's family agrees it, the marriage program is organized. The bridegroom can deny the marriage ceremony if he does not get the decided dowry. It is the worst aspect of this system. When demands for dowry are not met, the bride is subject to torture, and often even killed. The reason many parents don't want to have daughters is because of the dowry they will have to shell out at her marriage, and the stress they go through due to never ending demands from her in-laws. Bride's parents want their daughter to have a prosperous life. They want to support her economy. They certainly love their daughter. But in dowry system, the money and other things are not given to her for her happiness; rather they are given to make the bridegroom agree to get married to her. This system is banned by law. All the educated girls and boys should discourage and avoid this system. The parents of the girls should educate their daughters. If the girls are educated, they can find good husbands themselves. At any cost, this system should be wiped out for a civilized society. The dowry system is so deeply rooted in Indian culture, that sometimes one feels that there's going to be no way out. Even modern, well-educated families start saving up money for their daughter's dowry as soon as she is born. So what can one expect from the uneducated masses, whose only form of education is tradition? Dowry is an evil, evil system and all of us, at some level, condone it and even contribute to it.

CORRUPTION AND ECONOMIC GROWTH INTRODUCTION Corruption is the misuse of public office for private gain (World Bank). Corruption is universal it exists in developed and developing in the public or private sectors, in profit, non -profit or charitable organizations and spreading like virus. Corruption is usually kept in secret and therefore the agency structure, individual has no incentive to try to change it or to refrain from taking part in it. Corruption manifests it self as a public sector phenomenon. Typically firms, consumers, or other groups make payments to politicians or public officials in return for favorable decisions. Corruption is subject to increasing returns .An increase in rent seeking activity may make corruption more attractive, not less. Civil servants has reached to the stage that is either to survive by lowering his standard of ethics, performance and dutifulness or remain upright and perish, he choose to survive. The vertical integration of corruption at the various levels of executive branch, and the horizontal spread of corruption to other public institutions became the order of the day. Kautilya felt that govt servants could enrich themselves improperly in two ways either by cheating the govt or by exploiting the public. Corruption can take many different forms including bribery, extortion, and embezzlement. Corruption is various kinds i.e. opportunistic corruption, grand corruption, Political corruption, systemic corruption, or destructive corruption, petty corruption, administrative corruption, state capture corruption, honest and dishonest corruption etc. CORRUPTION The root cause of the very poor governance in India lies in corruption. The progress of any country depends on ultimately the level of the quality of governance in the society and the productivity of its operations. Corruption affects the quality of governance and definitely corruption is anti-economic development, as we will see presently. It is therefore proper that we focus our attention today on the issue of corruption in our society. Before we proceed further, what do we understand by corruption? Corruption is lack of integrity. This could be financial integrity, moral integrity and intellectual integrity. As the Central Vigilance Commissioner, I am mostly concerned with the issue of financial integrity. But moral integrity and

intellectual integrity are equally important. Today perhaps the main cause of corruption in society can be traced to be the following standards in morals. In a way, the corruption temperature of any society depends on three factors. These are: (i) the individual sense of values, (ii) the values cherished by society, (iii) the system of governance. Probably it is worth looking at the social roots of corruption at this stage. CORRUPTION IS ANTI-POOR: 31% of the food grains and 36% of the sugar meant for the Public Distribution System (PDS), which is designed to provide food security to the people below the poverty line, gets diverted to the black market. The government of India (GOI) spends Rs.15,000 crores every year by way of subsidy to the PDS. This means that Rs.5000 crores are not used for giving relief to the poor but land in the pockets of the corrupt shopkeepers and their Godfathers in politics and bureaucracy. Rajiv Gandhi once observed that out of every rupee meant for the anti- poverty programmes only 15 paise reached the beneficiary. Out of the 85 paise may be 40 paise can be accounted for as administrative overheads. The leakage of the remaining 45 paise is definitely due to corruption. Corruption is, therefore, antipoor. CORRUPTION IS ANTI-ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT: The collapse of the South East Asian economies in mid-1997 showed how even the so-called miraculously growing tiger economies of South-East Asia were not immune from the disastrous consequences of corruption and crony capitalism. The 1999 Human Development Report for South Asia, published by the Mahbub Ul Huq Centre in Islamabad, says that if Indias corruption level comes down to that of Scandinavian countries Indias GDP will grow by 1.5% and the FDI will grow by 12%. ROOTS OF CORRUPTION One of the social roots of corruption in India can be traced to our Indian culture of tolerance. Any number of examples are given in the Puranas where the sinner having led a life of sin can get redemption by taking the name of Lord Narayana in his last moments as in the case of Ajamila. In social terms this has come to be accepted. People who lived a life of sin like the prodigal son return to the straight and narrow path at some stage, usually late in life. If we examine the root of corruption, we will find that it arises perhaps from the extreme attachment of people to their families. Nepotism is natural in this situation.

Corruption, as defined by the World Bank, is the use of public office for private profit. A person in office feels that he should earn enough not only for himself and his lifetime but also for his children, grand children and perhaps seven generations. That is probably the basic motive behind the enormous accumulation of wealth by the corrupt in our country today. One major social cause that promotes corruption is the dowry system. Every public servant wants to see that his daughter is married off well and there is continuous pressure for having a minimum level of dowry. This may be one of the reasons why one comes across cases where even public servants who have otherwise led a clean life become vulnerable to corruption towards the end of their career. Dowry system is definitely one of the social roots of corruption in our country. Equally important is the social pressure in a competitive society for ensuring that children get the best possible education. Right from kindergarten in every educational institution, there is pressure of competition and education has become commercialised. This has been further accentuated by government policies about affirmative action resulting in a great incentive for self-financing colleges who charge a lot of donation fee and most of it is collected in black. Education pressure and corruption in the education sector is another social factor contributing to corruption in our system. GLOBAL CORRUPTION PERCEPTIONS The Berlin based organization Transparency International, based on annual survey it prepares corruption perceptions index , it is a composite index aggregates the perceptions of well informed people with regard to the extent of corruption , defined as the misuse of public power for private benefit .The extent of corruption among public officials and politicians reflects the corrupt payments paid by the public and the resulting obstacle imposed on business. Nations ranked on the basis of the level of corruption ,score ranges from 10 (squeaky clean)to 0 (highly corrupt). TI annual survey 2006 reveals that Finland is the cleanest nation by securing first rank with CPI score 9.6 and Haiti is the highly corrupted nation by securing rank 163 with CPI score 1.8 (table 1.1).CPI constructed on the basis of the performance of 10 indicators viz.. freedom of expression , govt open to public , accountability of legislators , accountability of civil servants transparency in the civil services , respect for property rights , equal application of regulations , access to justice , transparency in judicial process and accountability of judicial officials. CORRUPTION IMPACT ON THE INDIAN ECONOMY UNDP report (1999) for south Asia ,Indias GDP will be go up by 1.5% and the foreign direct investment by 12% if Indias corruption level come down to that of Scandinavian nations. Raghuraman( ASSOCHAM) pointed out that 40% of the electricity cost in our country was due to corruption , if no corruption price would be

40% lesser. One economist stated that Indian corruption is dishonest corruption ie if you give bribe the work may not be done and the bribe will not be returned. Wrong selection of beneficiaries using corrupt practices , benefited well of sections than poor, it widens economic in equalities and affects welfare . Bimal jalan (2005) if other things constant if there were no corruption Indias growth rate would have been nearly 8% per annum in 1980 s and 1990s rather than close to 6% .PHD Chamber of Commerce got a study ,if the corruption level come down by the standard deviation of 15%, investment will increase by 300% and GDP will grow by 1.9%. AGENCIES TO PREVENT CURROPTION There are four agencies in our country, which can be approached by the citizen to fight financial terrorism. The first is the judiciary. In its recent judgments the Supreme Court has enunciated three important principles, which will go a long way to improve the probity of public life and thereby check financial terrorism originating from the politics of our country. The first decision is that in the democracy, Constitution is supreme and it expresses the peoples will. Till now it was very common for the corrupt politicians to claim that they have been acquitted in the highest court in the democracy, namely the peoples court in the elections. The second decision is that the special provision in the constitution to the effect that a person who is not a member of a legislature can still be made a minister or chief minister or prime minister for 180 days. This provision was sought to be misused by some to virtually flout the spirit of the constitution. The court has held that the 180 days limit cannot be invoked more than once. The third decision is the clear judgment in the case of the chief minister of Tamilnadu pointing out that a person, who is not eligible to contest elections, cannot be sworn in as a minister or chief minister. These three judgments will go a long way in improving probity of public life in India. The second agency that can be utilized by the citizen to fight financial terrorism are bodies like the CVC, CBI, anti corruption bureau, vigilance commissioners in the state etc. A case in Delhi where the issue of corruption to the extent of the Rs.40

crores per month indulged in by the police and the municipal officials by collecting bribes from the hawkers, vendors and rickshaw pullers was resolved is a case in point. Ms Madhu Kishwar, an activist of the NGO Manushi, collected this data very patiently and the matter was brought to the notice of the CVC who then took up the matter with the Chief Minister of Delhi, Delhi Administration as well as Minister for Urban Development. The matter finally came to the notice of the PMO. Ultimately the PM on 23.8.2001 wrote to the Lt Governor calling for the abolition of licensing of hawkers, vendors and cycle rickshaw pullers, which was the source of massive corruption. The directive of the PM is being implemented. The third agency available to the citizen is the print and electronic media to publicize cases of corruption and policies that encourage such financial terrorism. In the case of cycle rickshaw pullers and hawkers, the media played a very important part in highlighting the issue. The fourth agency is direct action. The action taken by Lok Satta, an NGO in Andhra Pradesh to expose the extent of tampering of meters in petrol pumps and corrupt practices were put and end to it is an encouraging example. CONCLUSION Corruption is a major obstacle to economic development , costing billions of dollars a year that could otherwise be used to reduce poverty and promote economic growth, but the marginal social and economic benefits (positive externalities) will be more than the cost incurred to control corruption .A national movement on war foot basis is to be initiated to get freedom from corruption, Because of corruption nations credit worthiness ,and credibility will come down . Political commitment , people participatory approach , institutional reforms Bureaucratic accountability , and access to information reduction in barriers to competition will leads to decline in corruption and create better investment climate and leads to better delivery of public services in the economy. Consequently in the long run growth with equity will be achieved .and millennium development goals will be realized.

Child Labour Any child under the age specified by law worldwide works fulltime, mentally or physically to earn for own survival or adding to family income, that interrupts childs social development and education is called child labour. The most joyful phase in human life is the childhood. It is that stage of life when the human foundations are laid for a successful adult life. It is the phase when one is carefree, fun-loving, learning, playing and for most of us, those memories are our

most cherished ones. Sadly, this is not the story of all the children in the world. Yes, there are many children out there who can only dream of learning, having a care free life. They lead a desolate life, a ceaseless struggle to make both ends meet. Scared and tormented at such a young age. Some manage to escape their bleak lives and get a better life, but many continue to be where they are, not out of choice, but due to force. Almost one third of the world population comprises children. Therefore, they deserve to be cared and protected to keep up an improved posterity. They are an important component of the social structure and the potential future careers of culture. Child labour is presently the most unwanted practice as the future of everything belongs to children who are being ill treated in place of getting education. There are industries and individuals, who employee young innocent children. They make them work under grueling circumstances for long hours. There are individual households that have their own young children growing up in a cozy family environment, but they hire children as domestic help. Poverty and lack of education are the two primary reasons for the inhuman practice of child labour. Child labour is presently the most unwanted practice as the future of everything belongs to children. Child labour is a very big issue in todays world. In fact, it is one of the primary concerns of international humanitarian organizations. This is the story of millions of children in India. It is painful and yet true. The future of this nation is the children. And we should nourish them and nurture them with a healthy childhood.

The Role Of Media In Our Society

In todays world, media has made a very special place for itself in our lives. It would be no exaggeration to say that it governs a very important aspect of our living. In the words of Malcolm X, the famous American black militant leader who articulated the concepts of race pride and Black nationalism in the 1960s. The medias the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and thats power. Because they control the minds of the masses. The world of media is irrespective of age and outlook as well as regardless of nationality and creed. Media has always been a very huge part of the society, where it represents the society as a whole and acts as a mirror to the society, reflecting each and everything about it. Its major duty is to educate,inform and entertain people, providing all the news that is required by a layman for his survival. In a democratic country like India, media gives the citizens the power to express themselves boldly against the unjust policies of the Government, and even raise their voices against the corrupt politicians. Media may be of different kinds such as tele-media which includes television and online media, or print media such as newspapers and magazines. Radio FMs and AMs are also popular means of mass communication these days.The print media helps provide vital information to the people. Newspapers have become an integral part of our day-to-day lives, catering to the tastes of readers of all age groups and interests. Besides being an important source of information about the everyday world happenings, newspapers and magazines have become a tool for entertainment as well. There is news from the world of sports, there are job vacancies, advertisements, cartoon strips, astrology, matrimonials and various other columns and pages, which are a real feast to the reading minds. People eagerly await the arrival of the newspapers everyday and spend the early hours of the morning reading the news. Coming to tele-media, television has become an inseparable part of our lives these days. The emergence of the television has become the backbone of the global commercial development. Television contains the ability to produce multimedia content and thus has the immense power to change an individuals perception of reality. It is one of the most powerful of the many types of media that are available. It has got a lot of educative and informative channels, which we can use as a tool to groom the child. Let us now consider the Internet. The Internet or the web media is one of the newest and largest forms of mass communication given that it has no precincts; it is available uniformly throughout the world. As it offers literally everything under the sun from online banking to shopping to chatting and business networking. we have more and more people using the Internet than ever before. Facebook, Orkut and Twitter have occupied such special place in our lives that if we are not a part of it, then there is something really important that we are missing. With the advent of high speed Internet, it is possible to connect to our dear ones, who are miles away in another country altogether, in just a few seconds through media tools such as Skype and chat. Another example of an extremely powerful form of media is the cinema. The movies mirror the society and, besides providing entertainment, sometimes, convey serious and meaningful messages to the people. Films on the lives of great people can change someones life for better, forever. Take, for example, our very own Father of the Nation, Gandhiji. It is said that he was spurred on by a play on Raja Harishchandra which led to him take the stand of righteousness for the rest of his life. This started his journey towards becoming the Mahatma. Thus, if we just look around, we would find that there is no aspect of our life which is not touched or affected by media. However, we must not forget that there are always two sides of a coin. Media has its own advantages and disadvantages. Today, people accuse media of a number of malpractices and regard it as an agent of misinformation. Media is charged with laying too much emphasis on sensationalising the public. Today,

television channels and newspapers are making fast money by cashing in on the news in the wrong sense and the wrong way. People complain that the television channels are just airing programmes that give them high TRP ratings, and they accuse every channel of being a mouthpiece of some political party or other. The present generation and the next generation are highly in use of and are addicted to the Internet.