In what appears to be reaction to focus on female infanticide in India, the government has announced that it will be building orphanages for the excess of unwanted baby girls.

Dubbed the "cradle scheme," the plan is an attempt to slow the practice that international groups say has killed more than 10 million female fetuses in the last two decades, leading to an alarming imbalance in the ratio between males and females in India, Renuka Chowdhury, the minister of state for women and child development, told the Press Trust of India news agency in an interview published Sunday.

The minister is marketing the idea thusly:

"We will bring up the children. But don't kill them because there really is a crisis situation," she said.

... Asked if the scheme would not encourage parents to abandon female infants, Chowdhury said: "It doesn't matter. It is better than killing them."

This is a kick in the gut that has me gasping.

Talk about missing the point!

Would it cost anywhere near the amount orphanage care for millions of baby girls is going to cost ... and that's assuming this 'service' will keep any Indian women from aborting a female fetus or killing an infant at birth, which is doubtful ... to legislate against, and enforce such laws, against the crippling dowry system that forces parents of girls into even more extreme poverty, or to educate girls at no cost to the parents? To take any of a hundred other steps to convey rights, eliminate discrimination and level the playing field between males and females?

I don't see warehousing girls ... and I'm guessing these won't be the sort of institutions Whole Child International would be raving about ... with an eye toward correcting the growing gender imbalance any sort of long-term solution, or even short-term kindness.

In fact, if they're getting ready to spend the money on orphanages for 'unwanted girls' with the idea that it will be a good investment providing wives for the far-too-many potential perpetual bachelors the country is facing, it smacks of just another form of slavery .. or the same form in a different package.

Until the world ... the whole world ... wakes up to the fact that gender bias is a crime against humanity, NOT a cultural quirk that must be tolerated in the name of national sovereignty or ethnic or religious broadmindedness, nothing substantial will change.

This is another one of those things the UN would be addressing actively, IF the UN was a organization that dealt with global issues of import (rather than being only concerned with import and export and the money), and IF its agenda had anything to do with making the world a better place.

Since this is not the case, however, the best we can do is to continue to shine lights into dark corners and call a spade and spade.