Pune: The birth of any child is cause for celebration. But at a small 16-bed hospital on a busy street in Pune, the arrival of a baby girl is even more special. The nursing staff, mostly women, mark the occasion with flowers, cake and sweets for the family.
What’s more, the hospital doesn’t charge for the delivery if the newborn is female.
In the last 14 years, Dr Ganesh Rakh, who set up Medicare Hospital in 2007, has celebrated more than 2,500 such free deliveries. He started waiving off the fees when he saw that delivering news of a girl’s birth was like a death announcement. Families would hesitate to even pay the medical fees.
“When pregnant women came to the hospital OPD, their families used to think only of a male child. They were not even thinking about a female child,” Dr Rath told ThePrint.
That’s when the 50-year-old doctor, who has a Bachelor’s degree in Ayurvedic Medicine & Surgery, decided to waive the fees altogether and start celebrating daughters in the hospital premises. A normal delivery at the hospital typically costs nearly Rs 30,000, while a caesarean section can go up to Rs 60,000.
“The celebration doesn’t just change the mood but also helps change the mindset. Families carry some of the positivity back home as they see unrelated people celebrating and providing financial relief,” he said.
Dr Ganesh Rakh describes gender discrimination as a “soch ki bimari” (an illness of thought) that can only be battled by thoughtfulness—in this case, by giving the parents of girl children another reason to be happy.
Now, parents couldn’t agree more.
Amol Ghodke, father of a girl born in the hospital, was excited about the celebration: “They decorated the room, got cake, and it was outstanding. It felt like home. The staff was very caring.”
How it all started
Dr Ganesh Rakh first waived the delivery fee in 2011 for a woman from a construction site near his hospital where she arrived for her delivery. Many daily-wage workers, mostly from North India, were living in a camp for labourers near the construction site for a large township.
“Living among the same people, I could sense gender discrimination everywhere, growing up and later in my clinic, during OPD and when deliveries used to happen. Some of these people I had known for years. Even when they said they were happy on a girl’s birth superficially, I could sense they were not,” Dr Rakh told ThePrint.
“I had not thought so much about it. I just did it for the sake of happiness,” Dr Rakh said. “We are all proud of our culture; however, there are ills like gender discrimination that have been going on for a long time. The change must begin with self.”
Dr Ganesh Rakh added that most of his patients are from the lower-income groups with tight budgets, and the hospital’s small gesture goes a long way in magnifying their happiness.
Born in Vanjarwadi village, some 140 km from the Solapur district headquarters, Dr Rakh comes from humble beginnings. His family moved from the drought-prone village to the outskirts of Pune, close to where his hospital is now, soon after his primary education.
They made their home in a rental hut in a neighbourhood dominated by Mathadi Kamgars, or porters working in Pune’s wholesale markets.
As a boy, he was not particularly fond of studying and was more interested in wrestling. His mother saw this and gave some tough love: she forced him to work for two months alongside his father, lugging 100-kg sacks of grain after his 7th-grade exams. The porters did not wear proper footwear even in the summer heat for fear of slipping.
That’s when he first saw gender discrimination up close.
“Other than locals, all residents in the neighbourhood were families of porters. I saw women getting pregnant even after having three or four girls, hoping for a boy,” Dr Ganesh Rakh recalls.
After completing his Bachelor’s degree in 2000, Dr Rakh initially thought of moving back to his village. But he found most people in the village had moved to the city.
So, he set up a small clinic in a tin shed in the city, serving patients from backgrounds similar to his. In 2007, he established his hospital, a stone’s throw from the clinic.
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Evangelism programmes
Over the years, Dr Ganesh Rakh’s work has been highlighted by Amitabh Bachchan and Anand Mahindra.
According to Dr Rakh, who also has a Master’s degree in history, such acknowledgement creates opportunities for social awareness programmes that support the cause. He travels across the country for speaking assignments three to four times a month, all at his own expense.
“The problem exists countrywide, and work must be done across the country on such programmes. There have been more than a thousand such awareness programmes across the country and also in countries like Zambia, Sudan, Nepal and Bangladesh,” he said.
In the 2011 census, there were 914 girls for every 1,000 boys in the age group of 0 to 6 years. Dr Ganesh Rakh cites estimates in the Economic Survey of 2017-18 that suggest close to 63 million women were missing as of 2014, with more than two million women going missing every year due to sex selective abortion, disease, neglect and inadequate nutrition.
“This number is higher than deaths in genocides during WWI or WWII or the COVID-19 pandemic,” he added.
He also cited a 2018 paper in The Lancet that highlighted another grim reality: avoidable deaths of girls.
“Over 2,10,000 deaths per year of girls aged 0-5 years were avoidable and due to gender discrimination. If only parents or doctors had put in a little more effort and care, these girls could have been saved,” he said.
However, he is hopeful and points to changes in education and the upbringing of girls over time.
Patients echo the positivity.
“I have been a patient of the hospital for two to three years. The doctor and staff are very understanding. There were no fees for delivering a girl. It was surprising to experience it, even though I knew about it,” said Shivani Ghule from the nearby Manjari village.
Ranjeet Dighe, is an alum of ThePrint School of Journalism.
(Edited by Sugita Katyal)
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