PLIGHT OF GIRL CHILD IN OUR COUNTRY
“She is the reason that we have men,
She is the reason for life on the earth,
She is the bud to every flower, then
Why she is still tortured, then why
Does she still have to struggle to
Get the right”

In our very own country- India we shout with pride that how our country is the largest and most successful democracy in the world, we claim of liberty and equality among all, we claim of equality before the law for all; yet in this very country still now women are living in darkness afraid to come out and voice their opinion, they are still treated like toys in the hands of the alpha male. From time immemorial women have been discriminated, the jobs of men and women have always been demarcated with men working in fields and in public companies while women expected to make food, look after home and bear kids. In India women have been treated badly since a long time. From the practice of sati to the veil system and even polygamy have scared the dignity and the confidence of women. In this country especially, women have been always been asked to worship their husbands.

In India, many women who want to work and have their own identity are mostly suppressed by her own family members, or her in laws or maybe even her husband. In India it is somehow never the men’s mistake, even if a girl is sexually molested it is said to be a girl’s mistake. It is amazing how politicians defend the molester by saying that it was the girl’s fault as she had supposedly lured the man, here the question arises, which girl asks a man to sexually molest her?

The Khap panchayats in India are the most surprising community in India, it is not surprising that they exist, it is surprising that they are allowed to exist. These panchayats openly support child marriage and even ask women to stop using mobile phones, as apparently that is the main reason for all the molestation cases and girls going astray.

Every day there are articles of rape, molestation, harassment or domestic violence. For a few days media is all about these women, about their plight and then there are massive protests and young men and women marching with slogans and candles and then again after maybe two three days all of us are back to our normal routine and the media is again all about either the politicians or which Bollywood star said what to the other. Everything is back to normal but will those women ever be able to live a normal life; what happens to these women?

It seems that no girl is safe in this perverted country, where no matter how the boy looks, whatever he has done, how horrible or useless he is, he is still a man and will always be the golden bird of the country. Even schools are not safe, children as young as 3 year olds are harassed in schools. There are still many families in India some even educated who practice female feticide. Especially in the states of Punjab, Haryana and Jammu and Kashmir the rate of female feticide is very high. Annually one million females in India are aborted. Female not only face discrimination in this culture, they are even denied the right to be born. They are denied the right to education as well as most parents believe that daughters are meant to be married off and they don’t even have the capacity and ability to take care of her parents by earning a living. That is why most parents educate their sons and not daughters as they know that any way she will be married off, she is not even given a chance to prove herself and to show that even she is just not born to be married off.

The Khap panchayats claim that marrying off these women is the only way to save them from being molested and there ‘lovely’ husbands who may be as old as 60 years will take good of care of them and protect them. However, the reports of domestic violence in India is shocking. There are millions of women in this country who are beaten and even molested by their husbands each day. These women suffer probably the worst kind of attacks as they have no choice but to live with this person as they are married to him and getting a divorce would scar the reputation of the girl and her family. Still now dowries are common in this country and if dowry is not given then the consequence is usually that the wife is flogged badly sometimes even killed. Every day there are some way or the other that a women is discriminated and made to feel inferior. In this country all women have faced discrimination at least once in her life. For example- in many schools, girls are not allowed to play football because it is a man’s game, in the work place a women is mostly called not capable, every day a girl is eve teased or called various harassing names, even in our very own film industry the female actors are paid less than the male actors even though they have the same amount of scenes.

It is even more saddening to know that women are not only discriminated by the men but by their own female relatives including their own mothers who ask their own daughters to leave their education and take up household chores, who make sure that her son gets more amount of food than her daughter and who teach their daughters to wear proper clothes but fail to teach their sons to see the women with respect.

But, the change is slowly coming, the women of this country are braving the odds and pushing away the barriers, they are speaking up and letting the society know that they too have an individual identity and an individual voice. The women are now mothers, sisters, daughters, business women, fashion designers, world leaders, wives, sportswomen, army officers, doctors and what not. The women just need to put in a bit of effort and break in this male dominated world as only a women can help herself and break the shackles, and there is no doubt that women are powerful as only a woman has the strength to support another life and give birth to her.