Stop female focticide to prevent marriage crunch: Renuka

Kolkata, Oct 1 (UNI) Union Minister of State for Women and Child Development Renuka Chowdhury has called for putting an end to female focticide and gender discriminiation in a bid to save society from suffering the ''marriage crunch.'' Delivering a key-note address prior to the discourses of Sadhu Vaswani Mission spiritual head Dada Jashan P Vaswani here yesterday, Ms Chowdhury said, ''I can not even spell out what happens in a society where young men do not find young women to marry.'' In the present advanced society where we have got rocket technology at our disposal, parents kill their girl child.

Technologies are used against the birth of a woman and yet, we say Matribhumi (motherland). We feel proud of Matribhasha (mother tongue). If a man is a traitor to motherland, he deserves a punishment. Yet there is no respect for a mother, even though every woman is a Matribhumi. Discrimination of gender is discrimination against their own mother,'' Ms Choudhury rued.

According to her, people who consciously choose to discriminiate and destroy the girl child, who is giver of life and nurturer of society, were not confined within the poor and illiterate sections of the society.

''When the Bill, with regard to banning Sati (an old practice of charring the widows to death during the cremation of their husbands), was brought in Parliament, a lot of men got up and left while the discussion was on. When asked, they said it was a ladies' matter. They were told that there was no Sati without a Pati (husband). Sati is because of the Pati. The bottom of every problem is the man,'' she stated.

The minister estimated that women and children below 18 years comprised around 72 per cent of the country's population, adding it was the former that nurtured the latter.

UNI SB PC SKB NS1257