Issues of gender equality and disparity differ significantly when it comes to the mountain region and the plains land. In the highlands, given the geographical conditions of rugged steep terrain, heavy rainfall etc., the women have to directly bear the brunt of all climatic hazards. Heavy workload coupled with early marriages, between 16 to 20 years, take their toll on women’s health. This is more so because the families are generally large. This was found in the declining sex ratio in the age group of 29 to 60 in Sikkim.

Deep rooted disparity

The Sikkim Human Development Report 2001 revealed that between 1991 and 2001 the sex ratio dropped in Sikkim from 878 females per 1000 males (927 at the national level)   to 875, the lowest in relation to the other north-eastern States. The ratio was even lower in urban areas, going as low as 581 in Mangan in the North and 620 in Namchi in  the South. The female population in the age group zero to 29 years was relatively higher than that of males. However, the sex ratio was substantially lower for the 30+ age group, dropping to 655/1000 for the 55 to 59 age group. It again improved steadily for the 60 to64 age group, and was as high as 860/1000 for the 80+ age group. The steady improvement in the sex ratio in the 60+ age group points to the fact that women who survive the 30 to 59 years mortality zone, tended to have a similar life span as that of men.

This showed that the mortality rate among women in the 30 to 59 age group was relatively higher than in the 20 to 29 and 60+ age groups. Early marriage leading to sharp deterioration in health and inaccessibility to health facilities for the lower and middle strata was attributed as being a cause of this higher mortality in the 30 to 59 age group. The Report revealed that in rural Sikkim, 32 percent of the girls were married before they were 18 years and another 34 percent got married by the time they were 20.

At the heart of early marriage in Sikkim is the system of socially sanctioned elopement (bhagaune pratha). This system probably evolved because of the strict caste system prevailing in Nepali society. Under this system, caste exogamy was strictly prohibited for both the higher and lower castes. Faced with the threat of social ostracism and sometimes severe punishments for inter-caste marriage, bhagaune pratha evolved as a safety valve for social acceptance. It allows a boy and a girl from different castes and social backgrounds to elope. After three days of living together, the boy’s family goes to the house of the girl to inform them of the whereabouts and wellbeing of the girl. Some amount of money, alcohol and milk are paid to the girl’s parents, and the marriage is formalised. This continues to be a major mode of marriage between castes and to a certain extent between communities in the mountain areas. High levels of expenditure that have to be incurred in traditional marriage ceremonies have also helped to give sanction to bhagaune pratha.

This practice of elopement has, for the last few decades, become increasingly casual—to the extent that young girls and boys who want to avoid going to school or taking up any family responsibility often elope.

On the other hand in the low lands, gender disparity is deep rooted. Since its widespread practitioners, both educated and uneducated, and  literate and illiterate, tend to justify such discriminatory practices on absurd socio-cultural-economic grounds. Legislations and legal hands reach nowhere near these households and communities. It starts with a baby girl in the womb, and once she is born she has to run through various stages of both subtle and blatant discriminations till she passes away. These discriminations vary depending upon the social status of the family, ethnic identity and geographical locations. This is found to be extraordinarily acute in north India including Delhi, Rajasthan, Haryana, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh; and Gujarat and some parts of western and southern regions.

Wrong mind-set

On the one hand, the practice of female foeticide indicating a preference of male children is widely prevalent as indicated by the very low sex ratio in the zero to six age group of population. On the other hand, communities particularly in the north and west India literally starve to death a male calf only because it does not give milk. The basic mind-set is wrong, prejudiced and smacks of hypocrisy.

Despite the ban on the use of sonography machines for sex determination, nursing homes, hospitals and doctors openly promote such tests. Despite the hue and cry regarding dowry deaths, this ‘open purchase of prospective husbands’ has remained the most sought after profession and business by in-laws. The helplessness and to a large extent the cowardly attitude of the girl’s parents make the situation both complex and inextricable. Interestingly, if these parents have one or two sons they also extract as much as possible from their daughter-in-laws both before and after their marriage with their sons. This means the system feeds each other and tends to balance. This is why, in a particular pre-sonography generation, one finds that some parents have three to six daughters, indicating that they kept trying for a boy.  Sex determination tests, while shortening this 3-6-1 process however, also has a serious adverse impact on women’s health.

I was aghast to see all these issues when I came to Delhi in 1980 for advanced studies. These cultural shocks were never heard of in Darjeeling. The second shock came when we offered sweets to the hospital staff when our first daughter was born in a premier government hospital (All India Institute of Medical Sciences) in New Delhi. No one was willing to accept it with a smiling face.

This was not enough. Next time, when I took my pregnant wife for a check up to a famous doctor of Anand in Kheda district in Gujarat, he literally imposed a sonography test on grounds of some complications. When he came to know that we had an elder girl child, he immediately suggested an abortion to my wife who was more than five months pregnant. This suggestion from the ‘famous doctor and renowned gynecologist’ of Anand was the third biggest shock. We protested against what the society for long had adopted as a ‘cultural value’. What a perfect nexus between father-mother, doctor and a machine. They superbly complement each other. The mode of exchange is money and just money. Where do the state and law figure here in this intricate yet rampant game? 

Every locality suffers from this. Given the state of slow trickling down of national level interventions even in development projects, essentially a social intervention like ‘Beti Bachao Beti Padao’ can never be imagined to reach the masses. It has to acquire the shape of a crucial local issue in every nook and corner of India and build a national policy based on such a mass movement. This is what a score of community leaders including Raja Ram Mohan Roy did in the early 19th century in order to inject mass awareness about the inhuman practice of Sati in India.

There are states in the north-east region which have done relatively much better than other parts of India on gender empowerment issues. In many cases they are socio-culturally endowed to do so. Traditionally peripheral gender prejudices exist there. The majority would be women led households. Gender Related Development Index (GDI) are much higher in these states. However, these novel issues are never discussed or highlighted in the mainstream Indian debate and media.

Lama a senior Professor in Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi is the author of the First Human Development Report of  Sikkim in 2001