India To Pay Poor Families $384 Initial Fund To Raise Girls

March 3, 2008 12:47 p.m. EST

Delhi, India (AHN) - To counter a long-standing preference for male babies over females, India is willing to pay an initial $384 to poor families who will raise baby girls. The scheme, to be piloted in seven Indian states, hopes to save on its first year of implementation 100,000 girls from being aborted.

Mass female foeticide has been long ongoing in India due to long-held tradition of preference for male children, who are viewed as future money makers. The practice is abated by modern ultrasound technology which permits a couple to know the gender of the fetus.

Over the last two decades, an estimated 10 million female fetuses may have been aborted because of the preference for male children, the British medical journal Lancet said.

The $384 (15,500 rupee) will be augmented as the girls grow up. By the time she reaches 18, have finished school and is still single, the young lady will be entitled to a $2,476 (100,000 rupee) bonus.

Renukha Chowdhury, Indian Women and Child Development Minister, said in a news conference, "We will pay the money in stages and monitor how they are brought up... We think this will force the families to look upon the girl as an asset rather than a liability and will certainly help us save the girl child."

Because of the practice of aborting female fetuses, Delhi has only 900 females for every 1,000 male infants.

Whether the baby is male or female, it will nonetheless contribute to worsen the population problem in India, which at 1.1 billion, is the world's second most populous nation, next to China's 1.3 billion.

Unlike Beijing which has a one-child policy, now under reconsideration, India's population is on a runaway course that by 2050, the United Nations estimates it will grow to 1.6 billion to overtake China for the number one spot.