A beginning ...

Rest in Peace, Little Angel (Give the girl child a chance to live)

I've been meaning to start posting on this blog for over a week now, but I kept putting it off since I felt that I hadn't yet immersed myself deeply into the layers of the issue that I want to focus this blog on. The issue that pertains not only to the unborn female fetuses that are being aborted in countries like India but to the mere essence of being a woman. The generational undermining of the value of a female life, I thought, required a deeper study. I kept reading articles on gender inequality, reports on research conducted in areas with adverse sex ratios, documents listing statistical evidence of consistent decline in the number of girls born in regions worse affected by sex-selective abortions etc. However, I wasn't getting much out of my readings except frustration with myself for not being able to help the situation and frustration at the world for being so cruel. Today again, I chanced upon a news item published in The Times of India that talks about 13 abandoned newborn girl children on the streets of capital city of Delhi left to die in the cold. Needless to say, I was frustrated to no end. Eventually, I decided it was time to let my frustration out through writing about what I feel rather than running from bedroom to living room and back in hopes of burning it off as exertion.

I am not a sociologist by profession and neither am I a psychologist, but I am a woman. I am a woman whose life could've been easily snatched from her just as it was from millions of Missing Girls of India. I am a girl whose parents could've left her at an orphanage with a neatly packed bag containing a change of clothes, milk formula and disposable nappies. I am one of the group whose numbers are on a constant decline just because our lives have no monetary value. I am just a nobody who is lucky to be alive. Yet, I am somebody who wants to work towards making sure that there are many others who get lucky just like I did. Little girls who are being perished every day at the hands of deeply rooted misguided cultural norms deserve to live just as much as their male counterparts. Technology was meant to better our lives. Who knew it would be used in attempts of wiping out half of the human race?

My effort through this blog is not to state just the facts and figures (that are widely available on internet) but discuss the emotional distraught that an issue as such brings about in addition to my journey towards contributing in addressing the issue in a proactive manner. I intend to keep this blog as a diary for listing any accomplishments I might have in the next few months or years to get closer to tackling a crime that must take as high a priority as ethnic cleansing.

There are many articles, news, position papers, research reports widely available on the net. I shall also try to bring together as much material as I possibly can on this blog for a more informed view on the topic of female feticide / foeticide or sex-selective abortion. It's always good to know where and why it hurts before trying to treat the wound.

For starters, here's a valuable read:
India's missing girls -- Nipping them in the bud?

Not to miss:
UK Indian women 'aborting girls'
(be sure to watch the video / hear the audio)

Time for the necessary cultural awakening????

I look forward to populate this blog soon.