Long after you have driven away from the cluster of villages around the Usilampatti belt of Madurai, the images of bright-coloured hair ribbons, fragrant jasmine flowers in neatly combed hair, deep vermillion bindis on the forehead and the silver anklets worn by little girls with sparkling, wide,

The two issues in the field of fertility that have received widest publicity in the recent times in India are the rapidly growing number of clinics that are performing amniocentesis, which is followed by female foeticide and the birth of a test-tube baby in Bombay.

Infanticide has been practiced in all continents, but little dependable primary data exist on this subject. Presented here are the findings on female infanticide for a rural, south Indian population.

It was in 1991, when we were invited to a dialogue on female infanticide by the then Minister for Social Welfare of Tamil Nadu, shortly after the publication of a study on the subject by Aditi, that the Foundation* began its involvement with the issue.

Consequent upon the publication of the 1991 census preliminary results, one of the widely debated issues in India has been the declining sex ratio (defined as the number of females per 1000 males) in the country.

Infertility has been relatively neglected as both a health problem and a subject for social science research in South Asia, as in the developing world more generally. The general thrust of both programmes and research has been on the correlates of high fertility and its regulation rather than on

Violence is a state, of exploitation, discrimination, upholding of unequal economic and social structures, the creation of an atmosphere of terror, threat or reprisal and forms of religio-cultural and political violence [1] It can be perpetrated by those in power against the powerless or by the p

Female infanticide - the killing of female infants because they are female- has occurred not only in several cultures across history, but is known to occur in contemporary societies as well [George et al 1992].