Parents Abandon Baby, Dogs Eat Baby

So who killed the baby?

Was it (presumably) the parents who first stuck the infant in a polythene bag and threw it in the storm water drain? Or, the dog who fed the baby to her puppies?

In India, babies disposed of in such a manner (in drains and garbage dumps, thrown out of hospital windows or buried alive), are almost without exception female. Girls in India are still considered a burden. Their value, socially and economically, is far less than that of a boy. An abandoned male baby almost always has an obvious physical deformity. 

Since 1992, Jayalalitha's Cradle Baby Scheme, which attempts to ensure that (primarily female) infants that might otherwise have been killed are given for adoption, is estimated to have saved over 3,000 infants in Tamil Nadu. Cradles are placed outside hospitals, primary health  care centres, police stations and childrens' homes for parents to place unwanted babies in. These babies are then given up to an adoption agency. 

Since then several Indian states have adopted the scheme.

Activists argue that the scheme isn't without its failings. It isn't possible to trace an infant once it enters the system, and so there's no way of knowing when and, in fact, if the child is adopted. 

Once the child is given up for adoption the agency isn't required to keep tabs on its welfare.

But this is true of all children who enter the adoption system and isn't an indictment of the scheme as much as it is an indictment of the scheme of things. 

It has also been argued that the scheme legitimizes the abandonment of female infants.

If the parents mentioned in the story above had had access to a cradle, would they have chosen to place their baby in it? And would that option, given however little or much we know of the Cradle Baby Scheme, prove to be the better one for the baby?

Share

Beautiful Thing in Bangalore

If you're in Bangalore this week do join me for a reading from Beautiful Thing on Tuesday, March 8 at 6.30 p.m. The reading is being hosted by the Bangalore International Centre at TERI Complex. For directions, SMS your location to 'BIC' at 90088-90088. To read reviews of the book go here and here, and to buy Beautiful Thing head over to Flipkart (or come on over to the BIC!)

Refreshments will be served at 6 p.m.

Photo credit: Sanjiv Valsan

Share

Saving Aruna

In 1973, 25-year-old nurse Aruna Shanbaug was strangulated and sodomised by a ward boy/sweeper in the basement of Mumbai's KEM hospital. Shanbaug was in the prime of her life, due to go on leave the following day to prepare for her marriage to a doctor.

The attack left Aruna in a 'persistent vegetative state'.
Journalist Pinky Virani's interviewes with hospital staff and friends offered insight into why the ward boy,  Sohanlal Bhartha Walmiki, targeted Shanbaugh. A friend recalls Aruna telling her, '"That horrible sweeper Sohanlal ... steals the dogs' mutton, like a vulture ... I am just waiting for some proof. The next time ... I will report him immediately." Aruna had been assigned to the dog surgery research laboratory, where Sohanlal was a "tempoorwari" cleaner. (He was) rough with the animals, and dragged them along with their chains. When (Aruna) upbraided him (with "ice in her voice"), he said: "Sister, you worry so much about dog hunger and dogs getting strangled. What difference does it make ... when doctors kill them here?" Shanbaug had been warned by her cousin of the consequences of repeatedly finding fault with Walmiki.  He asked her to consider the fact that Walmiki was poor and "therefore hungry all the time." ... Walmiki's fellow cleaners reported to the police that Walmiki had said he would "take revenge on Shabaug by molesting her" and that he would "spend one month's salary to sleep with her."'

'Walmiki was sentenced to seven years imprisonment for stealing, and another seven years for having tried to harm Aruna fatally. Both sentences were to run concurrently. As he had already spent a year behind bars, he was, six years later, a free man. He was rumored to have become a ward boy in a Delhi hospital.'
Within a few years the doctor to whom Aruna had been engaged moved on. Her family abandoned her.
Thirty three years later, Aruna Shanbaug is once more in the news. The Supreme Court reserved its verdict on a plea by Virani to euthanize Aruna on the grounds that doing so would be 'cruel, inhuman and intolerable”. In her petition Virani had written, 'Aruna has become "featherweight" and her bones are brittle. She is prone to bed sores. Her wrists are twisted inwards, her teeth are decayed and she can only be given mashed food.'
Euthanasia is illegal in India. But why should Aruna, believed to be the only patient in the country to have lived like this for such a long period of time, be forced to soldier on? According to Attorney General G E Vahanvati, who was invited by the Court as the government’s top law officer to express his opinion, because it would set a bad precedent in a society that is still 'backward' and 'emotional'.
Since the time of her assault Aruna hasn't been able to see or speak or use her muscles or limbs.
I believe it is time Aruna should be allowed to die a dignified death. I would have wanted that if she was a friend or family member.
What do you believe?

To buy Pinky Virani's book on Aruna, go here.
Share