Nargis Yadav roadshow

The symbolism was trite. Born on October 31, at 7.20 a.m, Nargis, first child of Ajay and Vineeta Yadav, was wrapped in a pink baby suit, put under a pink cap and held up for the cameras as the symbolic seven billionth citizen of the world for the deluge of media persons which had descended on the community health centre (CHC) at Mal block, some 25 kilometres from Lucknow, the capital of a state which, if an independent country, would be the fifth most populated in the world.

Her mother Vineeta was not permitted the luxury of tiding over the fatigue of child birth. Instead, barely a couple of hours later, the 23-year-old, dressed in a red sari with small prints was made to hold up tiny Nargis and smile into the cameras. Six other new born girls completed the symbolic number but the spotlight was clearly on Nargis as her father, a farmer who works on his 2.5 bighas, was handed over a birth certificate (which, misspells the child’s name as Nargish).

In between protests by one Thakur Prasad who claimed that Nargis had been arbitrarily chosen even though his daughter was born earlier at the same centre, Ajay managed to tell the media that he had always wanted a girl child and had thought of the name (of which he does not know the meaning) much before the birth. And that he was the world’s happiest man.

Such thoughts had clearly not been on the couple’s mind when they set out from their home in the village of Dannaur, to cover the seven-and-a-half kilometers to the health centre on a cycle cart as Vineeta’s labour pains started.

Once at the health centre, Ajay was curious about the tent and the makeshift stage that had come up in the compound. He was told that a girl child born that day would be given lakhs of rupees (the figure he says varies between Rs 5 and 7 lakh) and also be recognised by the world. That prayer for his own girl formed, perhaps, just then in Ajay’s heart. Six days after the birth, the euphoria had vanished.

Instead Ajay is angry…and irritated. In the morning of the day he meets us, workers from Vatsalya (one of the NGOs involved in the celebrations) had come by and pasted a handmade poster on a wall of his courtyard. That poster had, in verse form, a health check list detailing vaccines to be given and vitamins to be taken, for the new born. “They told me to get my child weighed after a month at the health centre. I told them, she’s my child, I will feed her what I can and will weigh her if I feel like it. What have they given me for the child to expect that I will do as they ask”, he points out angrily.

There is another irritant…the NGO injunction that no photographers be allowed to take pictures of the baby and that no media persons be spoken to. “That day there was a rush to photograph the baby. Then they did not tell us that the baby’s eyes would be affected by the flashlights. Why now?” he wonders. He lets in that he is looking for a copy of the newspaper which he claims friends and neighbours had seen, with a report that the baby would be given lakhs of rupees. “The NGO people tell me if I can produce the newspaper, they will give me the money. I have asked relatives and friends to look hard. Anyone who brings me that newspaper gets Rs 500,” he declares.

Mother Vineeta has other worries. “In the village they keep asking us if the money has come. While we did not get anything, I fear that even the little that we have might be taken away by those jealous of the spotlight. I am happy for my child and the fact that she earned so much fame just after her birth, but this commotion scares me,” she says. Her anxiety is hardly misplaced, given that the first person we approached in the village for directions to Ajay’s house flashed a crooked grin and wanted to know when the “job” would be done.

Meanwhile baby Nargis, oblivious of the storm her coming has whipped, slept peacefully in her father's unplastered four room home. Her future is unlikely to be easy. But the very fact of the having made it out of her mother’s womb in a state where there are only 914 girls for every 1000 boys in the 0-6 age group is an achievement. That and the fact that her mother did not become another figure in a country that accounts for 22 per cent of the world’s total maternal deaths (State of the World’s Children 2009). The challenge will now lie in not falling to common ailments like diarrhea in a continent which accounts for two out of every five children who die before age five or becoming severely malnutritioned in a country where one out of every five children is so.

Going by her family’s standards Nargis is unlikely to get much education. Her father was unable to clear his class 10 exams, her mother is barely literate and only one of her three aunts studied till class five because the closest inter college was 1.5 kilometres away and the family thought it unworthy to invest in a girl’s education.

On the day of her birth, Ajay had told the eager media that he wanted his daughter to become a doctor. Again Nargis has the odds stacked against her given that only 65 per cent females in the state are literate. She might become, given the government’s own statistics, one of four girls who will drop out of school before the age of 10, or worse still two of the five who won’t be allowed to go to school so that she can stay home to care for younger siblings. And even if she were to get an education, she might not make it to the country’s paid work force which has only one woman for every four men. So exactly what did the mainstream media celebrate on October 31 or was it led by NGOs to create a celebration?

Dr Ved Prakash, superintendent of the Mal CHC concedes, “We are not very sure about how the girls will benefit. Seven celebrities are supposed to support them. We agreed to the function because it was a health related matter and we could create awareness on three vital issues: the need to check female foeticide, the population explosion and the importance of birth certificates.”

Prod him further and he is unclear about how the awareness percolated even within the Mal block. He does add, however, that the incentive for the celebration also came from the fresh coat of paint and curtains which the NGOs offered to the centre before d day. Many questions remain unanswered. How was the calculation, even if symbolically made (the NGO response: we work in the area among the community), who mandated this calculation, how was the impression that the girls would get monetary help created, was the consent of parents taken before the celebration (Ajay denies this) and so forth.

Shompa Mohanty, communications manager at Plan India, the NGO which took the lead in orchestrating the celebrations says, “We do not work on a welfare model, so giving money is out of the question. Seven celebrities (of which only five are listed in the official press release) will sponsor the girls and an element of money will be involved in that but it will not be given to the families. We will keep a watch that the girls be given adequate health care and go to school.” How any of that will add up to a better future for Nargis remains unclear.