Mercy Mission - India

SEPTEMBER 2010

Baby girls are being killed so their poverty-stricken parents can avoid paying large dowries when their daughters eventually marry. Is anything being done to correct the major gender imbalance facing India?

One third of the seats in the Indian Parliament are now occupied by women, however, in an impoverished Tamil Nadu in south India girls are regarded as commodities to be sold into marriage by a hefty dowry. Desperately trying to avoid losing all they have means abortion, abandonment and adoption seem their only options. Parvati, whose first baby girl was killed by her husband, was forced to give up her second girl as well, "they took her off me, gave her away. I do not know where she is now". A glimmer of hope for these mothers comes in the form of the Madurai Mercy Home, but even they are learning fast that educating the locals certainly isn't a quick fix to this complex infanticide problem.

Produced By SBS
Distributed By Journeyman Pictures

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• 4936
• poverty
• children
• dowries
• marruage
• india
• journeyman
• pictures
• news
• documentary
• current affairs
• journeyman pictures

[Mxyzptlk562]

@Zoroastrianistic No, not an Indian. However, other than our shared humanity, the one thing I am 100% sure I have in common with the 1.1 billion Indians on this planet is the opinion that you are an asshole.

Like I said, move on.

[nonamekid79]

Seeing this definitely makes me want to adopt won day (although I wanted to adopt before seeing this as well).

[cherylmanz]

if i was that mom i would lose my mind too. or at least say i did after throwing my husband down the very same well he threw my child in...

[hollyacook21]

@nonamekid79 they should make it more affordable to adopt i have a home and love and i could feed and cloth a baby but couldn't come up with 10000-40000 to get a baby

[hollyacook21]

are there laws saying they have to pay a dowry?

[NoLiesJustLove9123]

@kaddu01 have you even been to India?!!

[kaddu01]

@mohjaid1 if they didnt take those children their stupid bastards parents would have killed them or sell to someone or just left them to die somewhere...indians claim to be so developing not only economicaly but also mind way but still they r retarded sensless idiots who follow blindly stupid traditions...and u r the best example for that

[mohjaid1]

motherfuckers they took away there kids so that they can teach dem prostitution when they grew up...... fuck americans motherfuckin destroyers !!!

[urlove12day]

@ad1665 um... thats not going to work you need to look at fertility versus literacy in all countries in the world and the history of your own country the only real way (practical) to stop them breeding like rates is to educate all females and keep them in school as long as possible afghanistan has a youth female literacy rate of 18 percent and the fertility rate is over 7 children per womensouthkoreahas the highest high school graduation rate in the world and they have a really low literacy rate

[pimpdadysuperman]

Man this reporting is so off. India already has laws now that stop this kind of dowry situation, infact these laws are being used unfailry against the men now. 

[Bigbozz777]

blablablabla not Africa they are orginally Indian hindus they are ugly black disguting stupid shithole stinky assholes