This is a heartening story from the front page, to do away with all the stories of sex-selection and missing girls in Rajasthan:
Benefactors wrote a new chapter in the history of the state infamous for female infanticides, when they saved the life of a seven-month-old baby girl. Yogita was brought back from the brink of death after ‘Bhamashahs’ – as good samaritans are known here – pooled in the required funds for her surgery.
Born with a rare disease – transposition of great arteries with a defect in the right ventricle – doctors had put Yogita’s life to just a few days. For her father Vinod Bhoi, who works as a peon with a cloth merchant in Padra village of Dungarpur district, funding the expensive cardiac surgery was next to impossible.
It was an initiative taken by the Dungarpur collector Neeraj Kumar Pawan which changed the way things stood for Yogita. Contributions flooded in, mostly from local benefactors, and Yogita underwent the Rs 5 lakh “arterial switch” surgery at Delhi’s Escorts Hospital on July 17.
Interesting, though, that in the photo the mother’s face is blocked out by who I imagine to be the collector. Note also that the administration will also cover her future treatment and education.
I wonder why the collector decided to take the initiative. Regardless of the reasons (let’s hope it wasn’t to boost his reputation), the girl’s life has been saved and that speaks for itself. The cynic in me wants to believe that it’s just a publicity stunt; after all, how many girls are not so lucky? Yet the optimist is appreciative that at least one more girl has made it this far.
