#dnaEdit: Maneka Gandhi's suggestion to reverse law on pre-natal sex determination novel but not workable

Maneka Gandhi’s idea to legalise pre-natal sex determination has predictably attracted controversy and flak because of her failure to provide a cogent framework under which this proposed 180-degree turn in established law can succeed. The Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PCPNDT) Act was enacted in 1994 which banned and provided for stiff punishment for female foeticide and pre-natal sex screening. However, two decades after this law was enacted, the child sex ratio has declined in many regions indicating that the law has failed to achieve its objectives. Gandhi, the Women and Child Development (WCD) minister, chose to go against the grain by suggesting a reversal of this strategy. This would mean that the gender of a foetus should be immediately disclosed to the mother and registered in public records so that the pregnancies can be tracked till birth. After being castigated by women’s rights activists and others, the minister clarified that there was no Cabinet proposal and that this was merely an “idea given by some stakeholders”. 

The criticism attracted by the WCD minister for echoing this “idea” stems from fears that liberalisation of the PCPNDT Act will do more damage than good by removing the deterrence that penal provisions offer. Activists also contend that foetus registration at scanning centres is not feasible, considering that even the task of recording abortions, which are performed at hospitals, clinics, and primary health centres, has not been done properly.

Gandhi’s idea is surprising for another reason. It contradicts her own assertion that the Beti Bachao Beti Padhao scheme is “delivering encouraging results” in the 61 districts with the worst child sex ratio where the scheme was initially launched. That Gandhi, a feisty politician, and an activist WCD minister, had to quickly backtrack reveals that the discussions on allowing pre-natal sex screening are at a nascent stage. There is much merit in her suggestion — for example, technology can help where policing has failed — but the minister erred in not offering any specifics on its implementation.

Currently, the PCPNDT Act requires registration of ultrasound scanning centres, but law-enforcement agencies have struggled to ensure that radiologists or doctors do not reveal the gender of the foetus to prospective parents. The option of using decoys to ascertain whether a doctor is amenable to sex determination has hardly been pursued by law-enforcement officers. In this context, an idea whose time has come is real-time monitoring of scanning centres. This would require that ultrasound machines are paired with tamper-proof black boxes connected to the Internet so that sonographic visuals along with personal details of the parents can be transmitted real-time from the scanning centre to a centralised repository in each district. Side-stepping this will be difficult because any scanning centre that goes offline will have to explain the reason for the Internet outage that it suffered. The technology is already available and some scanning centres are already participating in a voluntary private initiative in Maharashtra. Considering the lucrative nature of the scanning centre business, it is for governments and district administrations to ensure that this is mandatory for all scanning centres where child sex ratios are dismal. Of course, the danger in this is that a few rogue scanning centres could go underground. But the greater challenge is to utilise the online data collected through foetal registrations to track and counsel the expectant mother through the months of pregnancy and post-natal care. Here, digital solutions alone won’t suffice and dedicated health-care personnel on the ground — who can offer counselling to the prospective parents — and sustained political efforts — to root out gender bias and violence — are needed.