By: Dr Jeanette Pinto –
God’s greatest blessing to mankind is the gift of life. This gift is most precious, we need to appreciate, be thankful, and treasure its worth. Recently a counsellor friend of mine related how she was empathising with a couple who were childless after 8 years of marriage. She was taken aback when the wife said, “I am upset with God because I have the right of being a mother snatched away from me.” With such kinds of words, people forget that every child is a gift and not a right. All of us belong to God, and parents are entrusted with the gift of children to look after, be it girl or boy. It is a blessing for which one should be grateful to God for He alone is the Author of all life.
Here is an inspiring story of one who promotes the culture of life by giving value to the life of every girl child.
-As a child, Ganesh Rakh wanted to be a wrestler. But his mother discouraged him telling him that he would overeat and finish everyone’s food. Her concern was genuine – his father worked as a porter in the grain market, carrying sacks on his back, while his mother cleaned dishes in other people’s homes. The family’s meagre income was barely enough to feed Dr Rakh and his two brothers.
God however had a different plan for him and he became a Doctor. “As a medical professional I have seen the torture that a mother undergoes when she comes to know that she has delivered a girl,” Dr. Rakh told reporters, “because regressive social norms are not only anti-woman but are even anti-girl child.” It sure was painful to see her reactions. Dr Rakh, who started a small hospital in the western Indian city of Pune in 2007, says that whenever a pregnant woman came for her delivery, all her relatives would come with the hope that the baby would be a boy.
“The biggest challenge for a doctor is to tell relatives that a patient has died. For me, it was equally difficult to tell families that they’d had a daughter,” he says. “Many told me that they had taken treatment to ensure the birth of a male child. I was surprised, as I wasn’t aware of any such treatment. But they spoke about consulting a holy man, or would talk of putting some medicine into the mother’s nostril to ensure she delivered a boy.”
He adds that it’s not just he who has witnessed how relatives thronging the hospital on D(eliver)- Day hug each other when a boy child is born and distribute sweets, but disappear when a girl child is born. He said in one interview, “Even other doctors see it every day in the maternity ward of hospitals. The tension on the pregnant woman for nine months is so severe and acute that you can actually see it in the fluctuations of her haemoglobin and blood pressure.”
Today, he emerges a hero, who has wrestled with one of India’s most destructive prejudices. The hospital he started in 2007 to serve the poor in the city of Pune, 60 miles southeast of Mumbai, delivers girl babies for free as part of his effort to reverse India’s murderous and growing preference for male children. His father Adinath Vithal Rakh supported his decision whole-heartedly. “He told me to continue with the good work and that he would go back to work as a porter if needed,” Dr. Rakh says.
In 2012, Dr. Rakh decided to demonstrate his own more welcoming attitude to daughters (he has one) by delivering them for free. It was not an easy decision to waive his fee for the delivery of baby girls, and he was predictably opposed by his wife and brothers. “We are economically not well off,” his wife Trupti Rakh said. “So when he told me about his decision, I was worried as to how I would run the house.”
Since then his hospital has brought 4323 plus, female babies into the world. His staffs were sceptical when he floated the idea. But he persevered and has proven that earnings from other procedures can pay for the free service. Now his staffs bake cakes for relatives to celebrate each new daughter.
With publicity, many of his classmates from medical school imitated him and gradually the movement grew to the point where some 3,000 doctors all over the State of Maharashtra, where Pune is located have signed up either to offer some kind of discount or to refuse to do tests to determine gender. Dr Rakh has also started ‘The Campaign to Save the Girl Child’ and gives talks in villages promoting it.
The 2011 census figures were an eye-opener for Dr Rakh, who dotes upon his nine-year-old daughter, his only child. They made him realise how grim the situation really was. On 3 January 2012, Dr Rakh began his own “crusade” – by launching the Mulgi Vachva Abhiyan (which translates from Marathi into “Campaign to Save the Girl Child”.) Today, his efforts have begun to bear fruit – ministers and government officials are appreciating his work and Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan has described him as a “real hero”. “I started a small thing. I didn’t know it would be received like this,” he says, adding, “but sometimes small things impact minds in a big way”.
So here is an Indian, Dr Ganesh Rakh who is truly on a unique mission to save the female child, he is indeed a Pro-life hero. He calls it his “tiny contribution” to improving the lot of the girl child in a country where there is a traditional preference for boys. He is truly promoting and defending the life of girl children thus helping build a culture of life and a civilization of love.
Resource: The internet
Dr Jeanette Pinto, an educator for the past 5 decades, headed the Department of History was Vice Principal of St. Xavier’s College Mumbai, and retired as Principal of Sophia College, Mumbai. She is a counsellor and conductor of Personal Enrichment Programmes for students and teachers.
She set up the Human Life Committee in the Archdiocese of Bombay. As a sex educator she has given talks on Human Sexuality in India and abroad. In 2014 she received the Rachana Outstanding Woman of the Year for her Pro-life work presented by the Diocese of Mangalore. She has attended many National and International Pro-life conferences and given talks at other fora on various women’s issues.
She is author of a couple of books, her most recent ones are titled: I’m Pro-Life Are you? & Sex Talk: Parent to Child. She has also written a number of articles on a variety of themes and subjects, which have been published in research journals, The Examiner and other Catholic publications.