'India should have 35 million more women'

By Gargi Parsai

New Delhi Oct. 21. With a deficit of 35 million women reported in the 2001 census compared to the three million in 1901, India cannot afford to wait till the next census in 2011 to determine whether the growing practice of female foeticide had waned and the girl-child mortality rate had gone up. On an average, there should have been 35 million more women in the country had the standard sex ratio of 945 women to 1,000 men been maintained over the years.

To strengthen the monitoring of female foeticide and girl-child survival, the Registrar-General of India (RGI), J.K. Banthia, has asked all the Chief Registrars of Births and Deaths to closely monitor the sex ratio at birth every month. As an example, 10-crore birth certificates would be issued across the country on November 14, Children's Day.

The sex ratio in the age group of 0 to 6 has decreased at a much faster pace than the overall sex ratio of the country after 1981. From 945 in 1991, the child sex ratio has declined to 927 in 2001. Sex ratio is defined as the number of females per 1,000 males in the population. It is an indicator of the decline in the number of girls as compared to boys. The child sex ratio is an indicator of the status of the girl-child in the society.

According to Mr. Banthia, who has formulated a brochure `Missing' on Mapping the Adverse Child Sex Ratio in India: "The imbalance that has set in at an early age group is difficult to be removed and would remain to haunt the population for a long time to come".

Analysis of the census data shows that those parts of the country where technology for sex selection is slow in reaching have a much better child sex ratio than the areas which are affluent and technologically advanced.

The top 10 districts with healthy child sex ratios are South in Sikkim (1,036 girls to 1,000 boys), Upper Siang in Arunachal Pradesh (1,018), Pulwama in Jammu and Kashmir (1,017), Bastarand Dantewada in Chhattisgarh (1,014), East Kameng in Arunachal Pradesh (1,011), Kupwara in Jammu and Kashmir (1,010), Senapati in Manipur (1,007), Mokukchung in Nagaland (1,004) and Badgam in Jammu and Kashmir (1,003).

On the lowest rung of the child sex ratio are the Fatehagarh Sahib (754), Patiala (770), Gurdaspur (775), Kapurthala (775), Bhatinda (779), Mansa (779) and Amritsar (783) districts in Punjab. The other districts reporting low ratios are Kurukshetra (770), Sonipat (783) and Ambala (784) in Haryana. Ahmedabad reports a ratio of 814 and South-West Delhi of 845. While the national average has improved to 927 in the latest survey, the State average of child sex ratio is 878 in Gujarat, 865 in Delhi, 909 in Rajasthan, 917 in Maharashtra, 939 in Tamil Nadu and 897 in Himachal Pradesh.

Microsoft unveils Office 2003

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI OCT. 21. In conjunction with the worldwide launch, Microsoft India today unveiled its latest offering Microsoft Office System whose core is the Office 2003. The Microsoft Office System includes programs, servers, solutions and services. As part of the launch of Office System, Microsoft introduced three new products — InfoPath, OneNote and Office Live Communication Server, in addition to Microsoft Office 2003 and new versions of several existing offerings.

"This launch signals the transformation of Microsoft's flagship Office brand, from a productivity applications suite to a productivity system,'' said officials. Four partners including Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, IntelSys, Prodapt, and Tata Consultancy Services demonstrated their solutions at the launch event. ICICI Bank, Mahindra & Mahindra, TVS Industries and Ashok Leyland are some of the early adopters of the Office System in India.

The company has identified four different needs which Office System will help address. These include; integration with business processes, utilisation of information, more effective and streamlined collaboration within and outside an organisation, and transformation of individual productivity improve- ments into specific benefits to the organisation.

Commenting on the expected customer uptake of the product Microsoft India Managing Director, Rajiv Kaul, said, "We are confident of the success of this offering in India. In the first phase, we expect traction to come from the burgeoning BFSI, IT Services, and IT enabled services and manufacturing verticals. At the centre of the Office System lies Office 2003, the next version of Microsoft's flagship productivity applications suite.

It includes capabilities to restrict unauthorised access and use of documents and e-mails. Improvements have been made to the e-mail client Outlook including changes to its interface and integrated instant messaging. In addition, Microsoft has introduced software which allows users to access Microsoft's research repositories over the Internet to create documents and reports.

The product also includes support for XML, the industry standard for information exchange, making Office fully compatible with any other offering supporting XML.

'Male-female ratio in the country alarming'

By Our Special Correspondent

New Delhi Oct. 20. " `I am yours. Don't kill me,' is the silent plea of a girl-child for survival. If a woman going in for female foeticide could hear this cry of an unborn girl, she would change her mind. This message should be put up in the form of posters at sex-determination sonography clinics in every State that reports female foeticide," the Minister for Health and Family Welfare, Sushma Swaraj, said here today.

Her second suggestion was a message to men saying, "Kuware reh jaoge (You will remain unmarried)" if girl-foetuses are continued to be destroyed in the womb.

Ms. Swaraj was releasing a brochure "Missing" on Mapping the Adverse Child Sex Ratio in India. The brochure is a joint effort of the Registrar-General of India, the Department of Family Welfare and the United Nations Population Fund. "The soul-stirring cover showing a little innocent girl with just one word: `Missing' is the strongest message I have seen on a small brochure. When girls go missing in a society it shows that compassion is missing," she remarked.

The Minister announced the appointment of teenager Sanya Mirza who had won the Junior Wimbledon championship, as the brand Ambassador for the Government's `Save the Girl Child' campaign. Every year, a girl achiever would be the brand Ambassador for the campaign.

India has reported a child sex ratio of 927 girls to 1000 boys in the 2001 census, against a world average of 1045 women to 1000 men. In some States including Punjab, Haryana, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Delhi, some districts of Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and recently Karnataka, the sex ratio has declined to about 900 girls per 1000 boys in the 0-6 age group. In some districts, the ratio has plummeted to less than about 850 to 1000 boys.

Sharing her concern and alarm at the missing girls, Ms. Swaraj said the desire for a son is the biggest impediment in the stabilisation of population. Law and monitoring alone could not have the desired impact unless the problem was tackled on many fronts and in a vigorous manner. The need is to stir the souls — through religious leaders, poets and artistes — of all those who are a party to this. She regretted that States such as Punjab and Haryana that deify little girls as goddesses and worship them on the eighth day (ashtami) of Navratri, were willing to kill them the following day on account of gender discrimination.

Earlier, making a power-point presentation of the state of the missing girls, the RGI, J.K. Banthia, said even the 1991 census had brought out that there was something wrong in the society as there was a deficit in women. "The 2001 census showed that this is spreading like cancer. A stage may soon come when it would be extremely difficult to make up for the missing girls,'' he said.

The UNFPA Representative in India, Francois Farah, said eliminating females just because they are females before or after birth was the ultimate manifestation of gender violence and discrimination, abuse of human rights and infringement on values of equity, equality, justice, dignity and quality of life for all.

Worms in chocolates: ban on sale of two batches

Tuesday October 21 2003 00:00 ISTPTI

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: In the wake of complaints of worm-infested chocolates on sale in the state, Kerala health department on Monday banned the sale of two batches each of Cadbury and nestle chocolates after worms were detected in them.

Searches conducted by food inspectors in shops in Parassala, near here, and Pattom in the city found that chocolate bars of batch 'Inroras W-6' of Nestle and '245313' of Cadbury's, both manufactured in June 2003, were infested with worms, State Health Director Dr V K Rajan told PTI.

Food inspectors across the state had been instructed to search and seize chocolates of these two batches and intensify the examination of other batches of products of the confectionery majors, he said.

Instructions had also been issued that chocolates and confectionaries be kept in proper hygienic conditions to prevent their contamination posing health hazard to consumers.

Complaints of live worms crawling in bars of chocolates were reported from Thiruvananthapuram and Kochi last week.