Nakusha: A Child Without A Name
by Sree Gururaja
Son preference and its impact on Indian society is notoriously well known. The belief that only sons can perform cremations/funerals of their parents is pervasive. Their entitlement to inheritance is assured except in matrilineal communities. Parental neglect and poor attention to a girl’s development is rationalized by the notion that she is ‘paraya dhan’ literally meaning someone else’s wealth - ergo, her marital family, so why invest the limited family resources. A good harvest prompts child marriages in farming communities. Girls toil alongside their mothers taking care of their siblings and housework. Educated girls are not generally preferred as brides which is another hurdle to girls’ education. Age old customs of dedicating pre-puberty girls to temples (devadasis and yellama) perpetuates the double whammy of caste and gender, exploiting girls from poor uneducated families.
How does the neglect of girls get manifested? While the phenomenon of low female to male sex ratio was recorded in the decadal census tables since Independence, demographers took notice of this in the1970s. The story goes that Padmini, then Planning Officer in UNICEF New Delhi influenced the Registrar General, India to report sex ratios in the age-tables. Bingo! The sex ratio in the age group 0-5 years, 6-10 years, 11-15 years drastically mirrored the adult sex-ratio. Another vital statistic of the 1981 census, the q5 ratio, that is survival at 5 years, was markedly less for girls than that of boys. To me, these revelations sounded the alarm, grabbing the attention of UNICEF, civil society, government institutions, demographers and academicians.
Several things happened. A mapping exercise was done using available data, disaggregated by sex and age: sex ratio, IMR, U5MR, nutrition status, primary school enrollment, completion and dropout rates, child labour and marriage. Except for Kerala, the North-East and Goa, a common pattern emerged highlighting the extent of disparities across the country. This was corroborated by the groundbreaking findings from a national research project on girl child conducted by 22 Women’s Studies Centres in Universities across the country in 1987/1988, which went further to document the discrimination in the daily lives of girls and its implications through their adulthood.
Our counterpart, the Department of Women and Child Development, was then engaged in the development of The National Policy for Women and the Joint Secretary, Ms. C.P. Sujaya showed much interest. This sort of “legitimised" our efforts and gave us confidence to move ahead. Among other initiatives, she convinced the Department to establish an inter-departmental group on the girl child (health, education, welfare, justice, etc.) to examine existing laws, policies and programmes. From UNICEF, Razia Ismail and I were invited to be ex-officio members.
Within UNICEF India, this topic evolved rapidly on different fronts. As a first step, a workshop on the girl child was organized for UNICEF staff. Follow-up actions in the short and long term included development of IEC strategy and materials; a framework for situation analyses at sub-national levels; building partnerships with NGOs and media agencies; collaboration for research and monitoring of programmes by NGOs and local institutions, and more. Findings from these studies were widely shared and served as inputs for new programme interventions. An array of IEC materials was developed by UNICEF Offices in India, some of them specifically targeted to orient the media, parliamentarians, legislators and policy makers in addition to community based awareness raising campaigns.
I recall a poignant memory. While making the film on the girl child, the 28-year-old producer, a recent graduate from the Film Institute of India, actually came across an infant girl in Pune, the third daughter in the family, who was called “Nakusha” by her parents - literally meaning in Marathi a child without a name! Of course, Nakusha became the title of our film. Our then Regional Director (late) Karl Eric Knutsson called it a bold and sensitive film and took it with him for screening at Headquarters in1989.
Meanwhile, building on the programme focus on girls in South Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, Agnes Aidoo, the Senior Adviser, Women in Development, Programme Division steered the global focus on the girl child with the preparation of a solid background paper. The 1990 Board paper (E/ICEF/1990/L.) reporting progress on 1988 implementation strategy, elaborated on the situation and status of girls while presenting the crucial focus on the girl child. Upon its consideration, the Executive Board in its Resolution 1990/17 endorsed the priority focus given to the girl child and recommended that “all UNICEF programmes and strategies in the 1990s address explicitly the status of the girl child and her needs, particularly in nutrition, health and education, with a view to eliminating gender disparities.” For us, in UNICEF New Delhi it was both an affirmation and an encouragement to expand our advocacy and programme interventions.
While we were engaged with the girl child in India, there was a new development at the regional level. The South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (SAARC) came into being. In 1986, UNICEF supported the first SAARC High Level Conference on Children, New Delhi, (which Jim Grant attended). The conference recommended that children be accorded highest priority in national plans and inter alia identified “the female child” and “adolescent girls” as priority cross-cutting issues. In subsequent SAARC Summits, children featured on the agenda but that is another story. Suffice to mention here that the 1998 SAARC Summit, declared 1990 as the “SAARC Year of The Girl Child” and the Fifth Summit, declared the 1990s (1991-2000) as "SAARC Decade of the Girl Child”.
What was UNICEF’s response? An informal girl child network was established as a forum for exchange of ideas and discussion on strategies to collectively influence national and regional activities. It comprised Nahid Aziz (Pakistan), Jowshan Rehman (Bangladesh), Naresh Gurung (Nepal), Sumitra (Sri Lanka), Razia Ismail and I (India) and two colleagues from Maldives and Bhutan. During 1989-1991, the network held consultations in New Delhi, Islamabad, Kathmandu and Chittagong (Bangladesh), where we shared findings from investigations, exchanged materials, listened to NGO perspectives in developing a framework for collaboration with the governments and civil society counterparts in the SAARC countries. Through this process, new regional alliances of NGOs were created which continue to be active advocates for the equal rights of girls.
Does the India girl child story have a happy ending? Not really, given the present situation of children. India adopted a rights-based National Policy for Children, which substantively addresses the gender-based discrimination in childhood. But what is the reality? Despite the policy measures and the raised awareness at the societal level, there is little or no change in the sex ratio of females to males in the age tables 0-15 year olds in the 1991 census from 1981. Some progress has been achieved in girls’ education through targeted, incentive-driven programmes in primary education and new legislation has made an impact on raising the age of marriage in most regions. Exploitation, sexual abuse, violence, trafficking of girls persist and protection measures are yet to go to scale and are mostly limited to NGO efforts. The Covid -19 pandemic has exacerbated the situation. In this dismal scenario, a ray of hope is the emergence of confident and educated young women who can be inspired to work for a brighter future for their sisters and daughters!
Son preference and its impact on Indian society is notoriously well known. The belief that only sons can perform cremations/funerals of their parents is pervasive. Their entitlement to inheritance is assured except in matrilineal communities. Parental neglect and poor attention to a girl’s development is rationalized by the notion that she is ‘paraya dhan’ literally meaning someone else’s wealth - ergo, her marital family, so why invest the limited family resources. A good harvest prompts child marriages in farming communities. Girls toil alongside their mothers taking care of their siblings and housework. Educated girls are not generally preferred as brides which is another hurdle to girls’ education. Age old customs of dedicating pre-puberty girls to temples (devadasis and yellama) perpetuates the double whammy of caste and gender, exploiting girls from poor uneducated families.
How does the neglect of girls get manifested? While the phenomenon of low female to male sex ratio was recorded in the decadal census tables since Independence, demographers took notice of this in the1970s. The story goes that Padmini, then Planning Officer in UNICEF New Delhi influenced the Registrar General, India to report sex ratios in the age-tables. Bingo! The sex ratio in the age group 0-5 years, 6-10 years, 11-15 years drastically mirrored the adult sex-ratio. Another vital statistic of the 1981 census, the q5 ratio, that is survival at 5 years, was markedly less for girls than that of boys. To me, these revelations sounded the alarm, grabbing the attention of UNICEF, civil society, government institutions, demographers and academicians.
Our counterpart, the Department of Women and Child Development, was then engaged in the development of The National Policy for Women and the Joint Secretary, Ms. C.P. Sujaya showed much interest. This sort of “legitimised" our efforts and gave us confidence to move ahead. Among other initiatives, she convinced the Department to establish an inter-departmental group on the girl child (health, education, welfare, justice, etc.) to examine existing laws, policies and programmes. From UNICEF, Razia Ismail and I were invited to be ex-officio members.
I recall a poignant memory. While making the film on the girl child, the 28-year-old producer, a recent graduate from the Film Institute of India, actually came across an infant girl in Pune, the third daughter in the family, who was called “Nakusha” by her parents - literally meaning in Marathi a child without a name! Of course, Nakusha became the title of our film. Our then Regional Director (late) Karl Eric Knutsson called it a bold and sensitive film and took it with him for screening at Headquarters in1989.
While we were engaged with the girl child in India, there was a new development at the regional level. The South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (SAARC) came into being. In 1986, UNICEF supported the first SAARC High Level Conference on Children, New Delhi, (which Jim Grant attended). The conference recommended that children be accorded highest priority in national plans and inter alia identified “the female child” and “adolescent girls” as priority cross-cutting issues. In subsequent SAARC Summits, children featured on the agenda but that is another story. Suffice to mention here that the 1998 SAARC Summit, declared 1990 as the “SAARC Year of The Girl Child” and the Fifth Summit, declared the 1990s (1991-2000) as "SAARC Decade of the Girl Child”.
What was UNICEF’s response? An informal girl child network was established as a forum for exchange of ideas and discussion on strategies to collectively influence national and regional activities. It comprised Nahid Aziz (Pakistan), Jowshan Rehman (Bangladesh), Naresh Gurung (Nepal), Sumitra (Sri Lanka), Razia Ismail and I (India) and two colleagues from Maldives and Bhutan. During 1989-1991, the network held consultations in New Delhi, Islamabad, Kathmandu and Chittagong (Bangladesh), where we shared findings from investigations, exchanged materials, listened to NGO perspectives in developing a framework for collaboration with the governments and civil society counterparts in the SAARC countries. Through this process, new regional alliances of NGOs were created which continue to be active advocates for the equal rights of girls.
Does the India girl child story have a happy ending? Not really, given the present situation of children. India adopted a rights-based National Policy for Children, which substantively addresses the gender-based discrimination in childhood. But what is the reality? Despite the policy measures and the raised awareness at the societal level, there is little or no change in the sex ratio of females to males in the age tables 0-15 year olds in the 1991 census from 1981. Some progress has been achieved in girls’ education through targeted, incentive-driven programmes in primary education and new legislation has made an impact on raising the age of marriage in most regions. Exploitation, sexual abuse, violence, trafficking of girls persist and protection measures are yet to go to scale and are mostly limited to NGO efforts. The Covid -19 pandemic has exacerbated the situation. In this dismal scenario, a ray of hope is the emergence of confident and educated young women who can be inspired to work for a brighter future for their sisters and daughters!
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