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baby boy. They don't want to have a female child. Their reason behind that is to have an heir for their property. Therefore, the urban rich have a high percentage of carrying out foetus sex-determination tests. But that general observational notion failed in case of blocks 'Valva' and 'Shirur'. We decided to research about these blocks through the socioeconomic lens. 'Valva' block was famous for Sugar industry, its entire economy was based on sugarcane farming and sugar-processing factories. Comparatively, 'Shirur-Kasara' block was very poor. Sugarcane farm labourers (Labourers who cut sugarcane) dominated the social sphere in Shirur. One thing we found difficult to understand was as to why the families of these 2 blocks didn't want a girl child at all? The answer was related to the kind of work women labourers did in those 2 blocks. Rural women labourers are completely ignored by the factories, let alone giving them minimum wage. To add to their misery, modern technology usage in sugarcane farming and chopping has led to a reduction of labour for both the genders. All of this results in not wanting to have a girl child. But in the Beed district, the situation is different. The major chunk of the workforce is occupied by women there, but they are still not safe. Places, where they migrate for work, are not safe as well. Also, the migrating families, who leave their daughters behind in the same village are also constantly insecure about their safety. That's why they don't want girls to born. Reduction of the female population leads to an increasing number of sex-related crimes. Worst thing amid all this is insane insensitivity shown by our society towards crimes related women. Eve-teasing, sexual harassment and other crimes are so normalised in our society that we have stopped feeling anything about them. Women issues are treated as a matter of shame in Indian society. Coming back to the topic, two blocks were very different in terms of socio-economic structure with the common issue of not wanting a girl child. With different reasons of course! On one side mentality and on the second side vulnerability.
