The 50 Million Missing Campaign

https://genderbytes.wordpress.com

The 50 Million Missing Campaign is an award winning, global campaign to end the ongoing female
genocide in India. It was founded by author and gender activist, Rita Banerji, in 2006. Today, it is the
largest, grassroots movement to end the genocide of women, and is supported in more than 211 countries.

More than 50 million women have been systematically exterminated from Indias population in three
generations, through the gender-specific infliction of violence in various forms, such as female feticide
through forced abortions, female infanticides, dowry murders, and honor killings.

What is driving the female genocide in India? What is the linking factor that is causing the systematic and
targeted annihilation of women through feticide, infanticide and dowry murders. This is the question that
we at the campaign have been asking.

After 3 years of observations, research, surveys, cases, discussions, and analysis, the conclusion we have
reached is that none of the following is a factor in Indias female genocide : economics, education, class,
caste, religion, and community. It involves the educated and wealthy, as well as the poor and uneducated
a conclusion also reached in a recent High Court verdict. In an infanticide case the Court concluded with
this statement :

60 years of independence and so-called modernization has not changed the societal attitude towards the
female child. Across the board; rural or urban, educated and uneducated, rich and poor, the skewed sex
ratio adverse to the female child is a sad mirror image of the social thinking even in the 21st Century.

So what is driving the female genocide in India?

The answer: A vulgar, chronic, and criminal GREED for dowry.

Dowry in India today has become the no.1 method of criminal extortion through the infliction of blackmail,
torture, violence, and murder of women.

Every son born into a family is greedily viewed as the golden goose who will bring in the fantasized wealth
through the dowry they will demand when he gets married. So families want more and more sons. There
is no end to the wealth demand even after marriage, and if the woman is killed, the son can marry
again. For another dowry!

Why kill, why not just divorce? In the case of divorce, there is always the chance that the woman or her
family will demand their dowry money/ items back.
The families that are consumed with hoarding dowries, are the same ones that also do not want to pay
dowry to other families. Hence, not only do they torment and kill women who marry into their families,
but they destroy daughters in their own families through selective female feticide, infanticide and the
killing of toddlers through starvation and deliberate neglect.

Dowry the practice of easy wealth acquisition is spreading like wild-fire in India. Communities, regions
and religions that never traditionally practiced dowry, have now jumped on the band-wagon. Along with
this there is an uncontrolled increase in the murder of women and girl infants and an exponential increase
in female feticide.

As of yet the system of law and order in India has shown little inclination towards bringing this situation
under control.

Some More Research on Dowry

Dowry was declared illegal in India in 1961; nonetheless, it still plays a significant role in marriages across
India. Every year, India reports the highest number of dowry-deaths globally.

In the past three years, 24,771 dowry deaths were reported in the country according to the Indian Express.
This means 24, 771 women were murdered or driven to suicide by continuous harassment and torture by
husbands and in-laws in an effort to extort an increased dowry.

So, if dowry isnt good, beneficial or legal, why do they still partake in this tradition? As a long-established
practice, people see it as part of their cultural history that they need to fulfil. Resultantly, people have
come to accept dowry as a necessary and unquestioned part of marriages, without which they will end up
with an unwed daughter and a bad name for their family.

Unfortunately, when it comes to reporting, despite data that says that a woman is killed for dowry every
hour, cases involving violence against women have an extremely low rate of conviction in India. In fact, in a
lot of circumstances, the abused woman is forced to remain at home with her husband or in-laws.