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Shams Shaikh

BBC documentary filmmaker Ashok Prasad talks about female infanticide in India after a screening of the film "India's Missing Girls".

Award-winning BBC documentary filmmaker Ashok Prasad screened his documentary “India’s Missing Girls” last night in Tresidder Union. Following the film, he spoke with the audience of more than 100 students and faculty members.

While the documentary has been shown throughout the U.K. and Europe, it had never been publicly screened in the U.S., leading Prasad to lightly announce that last night was the “premiere of this film in the [United] States.”

The 45-minute documentary was inspired by the widely-publicized discovery of an infant girl buried alive by her grandfather in South India last year. Prasad, on an assignment from the BBC, spent six weeks uncovering the pervasive trend of female infanticide and feticide in India.

Throughout the film, Prasad explored the reasons for the Indian population’s preference for male children. One reason, he said, is the dowry system.

“Though dowries are legally banned, they still occur,” Prasad explained in the film. “For a poor family, one daughter’s dowry may be two to three years’ worth of earnings.”

In addition, while female offspring leave the family once they marry, males help support the family and are able to continue the family name.

The film’s emotional power derived mainly from its focus on a central character, Sandhya, the founder of the Aarti Home which is a home in the rural South India town of Kadapa for abandoned children — the overwhelming majority of whom are female.

The film focuses on a number of situations and difficulties that Sandhya faces: a pregnant woman who unhappily carried a girl and wanted to give the baby to Aarti Home; a woman whose wealthy husband forced her to abort a third female daughter despite having the money to raise such a child; and a premature baby girl who was mysteriously abandoned by her grandparents.

“It is usually the second, third or fourth female child in a family that is aborted or abandoned,” Prasad said in a question and answer session following the screening.

“Technology has added onto the problem,” he said.

Ultrasounds, which are generally used to detect fetal viability and abnormalities, are mainly used in India to determine fetal sex. This has led to the rise of a large number of “ultrasound clinics” in India, which are often a front for abortion clinics.

In one particularly memorable and graphic portion of the film, footage was shown of a number of aborted female fetuses being retrieved from a well behind an ultrasound clinic.

“It’s shocking that such things still happen in 2008,” said Mika Wang ‘11.

Prasad hopes that PBS will pick up and air the documentary in the U.S.

“I also sent a copy of this film to the president of India, who happens to be the first female president,” Prasad said during the presentation. “Hopefully she will see it and decide to air it in India.