पान:Bitter Sugarcane.pdf/14

विकिस्रोत कडून
या पानाचे मुद्रितशोधन झालेले नाही

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Thought behind not wanting a girl child in a wealthy society is that the families will have to allocate some part of the land for that child, they have to spend money on that child, and they will have to give an absurd amount of money as 'Hunda'(Dowry). Contrary to that, the poor, labourers' families don't want a female child because 1) Safety at workplace 2) Safety of daughters who are left behind at homes 3) Male child can grow up to become a labourer who will get more wage in comparison to women labourer. Also, poor families have to think about marriage expenses if there is a girl child. Basically, nobody wants a girl child, wealthy or poor, it doesn't matter! A girl is not an option to a boy, she is not wanted at all! We had to work through difficult situations with very less manpower. Heart-breaking as it was, it gave us more energy to save girls, because the lives of thousands of girls depended on our shoulder even before their first breath. Luckily enough, the central government decided to help us by allocating some funds and also gave us permission to officially work in Satara, Sangali, Kolhapur, Solapur and Beed districts. Meanwhile, in Beed, we had made some really good contacts. Government officials, some progressive women, and mainly women workers from 'Asha' started speaking to us freely. Everyone secretly was demanding some kind of action on 'Shirur-Kasara' block. Even the Primary health centre officials were asking for help. We lacked experience on the block level, but we very well knew that we had to start our work from the bottom, root level and then move ahead accordingly. Shirur-Kasar, again, a completely new area. We had never visited the place. On one fine day, I asked Kailash "Let's just go there once and check the area." We reached that place and saw something very interesting, an entire road was full of hospitals and clinics on both sides. The road was called 'Hospital Road' unsurprisingly. Almost all the clinics had the notification plate mentioning 'Sonography available'. We noticed that some poor women had to sell their jewellery to do sonography! Degrees mentioned on the nameplates of Doctors seemed