Activists work on students' awareness

Mumbai: In a bid to spread awareness against the practice of female foeticide in the city, the Forum against Sex Selection (FASS) held interactive session with students to organise a gender equality initiative on the occasion of National Youth Day yesterday.

In collaboration with Mumbai University, National Social Service (NSS), NGOs working on gender issues in Maharashtra and Chetana College, FASS organised an event where film actor and social activist Rahul Bose exhorted over 500 NSS students to stand up against age-old prejudices against girls.

"Is there equality among boys and girls in our society?" he asked and then said, "No, why are girls and boys treated differently? What can you as students do to curb the menace of missing girls?"

NGOs attribute the glaring sex ratio — reducing from 922 to 874 girls per 1,000 boys in Mumbai in the last decade — to illegal sex selection practices and sex selective abortion.