DAINIK BHASKAR CAMPAIGN's AGAINST FEMALE FOETOCIDE in Punjab, Chandigarh and Haryana

March 29, 2012: Dainik Bhaskar, as part of its social responsibility, took on a one month educative and participative drive against female foeticide and abandoning the girl child at birth.

Dainik Bhaskar "BETI BACHAO MUHIM" (Save The girl child) initiative concentrated in the state of Punjab and Haryana, where this hideous practice has lead to serious imbalance and declining sex ratio. It aimed at creating enhanced awareness on the social menace of Female foeticide, educating masses through a series of editorial articles and public rallies and to initiate much needed social impact through participative ground movement.

The campaign saw relentless editorial coverage for 23 days. Additional local level focus group discussions among eminent personalities of the region were conducted and shared with the readers. Other than the local social and political influencers 23 bollywood celebrities like Vidiya Balan, Bipasha Basu, Shilpa Sheety, Kiran Kher, Preety Zinta, Juhi Chawla, Divya Dutta, Shabana Ajmi, Lara Dutta and Aishwarya Rai associated with the Dainik Bhaskar initiative by sharing their point of view.

A series of mass interactive activities were conducted to further enhance awareness among residential areas across 40 centers in Punjab and Haryana. These included signature campaign on 20th March 2012; where 4 lac people signed and took oath against this social menace. On 22nd March 2012 a Candle light vigil was simultaneously organized across 40 centers in Chandigarh, Punjab and Haryana

The culmination of the campaign saw a "Beti Bachao" March on 23rd March 2012 in 40 towns with collective participation of more than 3 lac in Chandigarh, Punjab and Haryana. This was a unique unpatrolled simultaneous initiative across the 40 towns in Punjab, Chandigarh and Haryana. Dainik Bhaskar promises to keep working on its agenda of socio-economic changes, catalyzing the mass psyche on social and economic issues.

Speaking on the 'Beti Bachao Muhim' Ashu Phakey, COO CPH said "Declining sex ratio is a serious problem in the state of Punjab and Haryana. As an enabler of socio-economic change, we at Dainik Bhaskar have a responsibility to create awareness against this social menace and making more and more people aware about this social evil. This endeavor from Bhaskar is small step to uproot this social evil from society. This is not the end we will continue our work against this social menace" He added "I would like to end by saying "Daughters are blessings, not a burden"

Kamlesh Singh, State Editor CPH who was the force behind the critical editorial environment for the initiative said "Punjab and Haryana are industrious and prosperous states but always figure at the bottom in case of gender ratio. Female foeticide is rampant and known but the two states have not woken up to the harsh reality of a crisis. We were overwhelmed by the response and to quote a reader from Ambala who sent a message the following day, it was organized in "an unprecedented manner. The scale of coverage and number of people involved is unbelievably large." That quite sums it up".

About Dainik Bhaskar Group

Dainik Bhaskar Group: 'India's Largest Newspaper Group' has a strong presence in newspapers, radio, event marketing, printing, short code, Digital, services and Mobile application. Its flagship Hindi daily newspapers are ; Dainik Bhaskar, Gujarati daily ; Divya Bhaskar, Marathi daily; Divya Marathi and English Daily; DNA , it covers 13 States with 64 editions reaching across 19.2 Million readers every day.

Additionally, it publishes 3 other newspaper titles Business Bhaskar (Hindi financial and Business newspaper), DB Gold, DB Star. In magazine sphere it publishes 'Aha! Zindagi' (a magazine devoted to positivity in life), 'Bal Bhaskar' (Hindi) and Young Bhaskar (English) for young readers and Lakshay (A personal career grooming magazine). The other media businesses includes MY FM; FM Radio station network across 17 cities, 54567 (Short Code) and IMCL (Digital services)