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`Sensitise students to declining juvenile sex ratio'

By Our Staff Reporter

TIRUCHENGODE, FEB.10. Education should sensitise students, especially girls, to vital societal issues such as the declining juvenile sex ratio for the learning to be meaningful, the chairperson, State Commission for Women, V. Vasanthi Devi, said here today.

For education to be holistic it must be a "woman making education'', Dr. Vasanthi Devi said adding that the effort should culminate in evolving socially-minded citizens who were sensitive to the people and their issues around the learner. Newer challenges confront women and they needed to develop leadership qualities to wither the challenges both domestically and in the wider world. Only then, "women empowerment" would be achieved, she told the Women's Forum of the K.S.R. College of Arts and Science.

`Wake up to reality'

Urging the students to "wake up to the realities around'' them, Dr. Vasanthi Devi urged the girls to "question everything'' that impeded societal progress and forces that tried to shackle women's development. In particular, she wanted the students to work and eliminate the scourge of selective elimination of female foetuses reportedly in alarming proportions in certain pockets of the State. It has led to declining juvenile sex ratio , she cautioned.

The root of declining sex ratio and female infanticide could be traced to evils such as dowry harassment. "Even in educated and affluent societies, the dowry danger lurks, reducing matrimony to a farce'', she observed. Even now, the women's needs were sacrificed at the altar of "social honour'', she felt.

Expressing concern that an invisible wall sans any window separated the students and the society, Dr. Vasanthi Devi called upon the universities and colleges to pull down that wall for the students to breath a whiff of fresh air. "Education must give you the confidence and courage to face the blows the world is waiting to deliver'', she told the gathered women students. In fine, the purpose of education was not "to inform'' but to ``sensitise'', she said. As an educationist, Dr. Vasanthi Devi confessed, she felt ashamed that the education being provided has failed to give sufficient relief even to the suffering literate women. Be a role model to the society at large, she exhorted the women students.

As far as the Commission's work was concerned, Dr. Vasanthi Devi said that her panel would go into various complaints received from affected and aggrieved women and try to sensitise the authorities by giving proper directions to redress the grievances. The Chairman, KSR Educational Institutions, K.S. Rangasamy, the Executive Director, KSR Educational Institutions, Kavitha Srinivasan, and the principal, KSR College of Arts and Science, M. Ganesan, spoke.

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