Kerala’s Ammathottil receives 1,000th infant, named Sahasra

The Story in Brief

A five-day-old baby girl placed in the Ammathottil electronic cradle at the Kerala State Council for Child Welfare in Thiruvananthapuram early Tuesday became the 1,000th infant received since the scheme began in 2002. Named Sahasra by council officials, she weighed 2.57 kg and triggered an automatic alert to the district medical officer. Kerala, which set up its first cradle in the capital in 2002, now has cradles in every district. Tamil Nadu pioneered the cradle scheme in 1992 under Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa to combat female infanticide, and has cared for more than 6,000 infants to date. Karnataka, Odisha and Rajasthan have since launched similar programmes.

Critics argue that such schemes normalise the abandonment of girl children, noting that 681 of the 1,000 infants received in Kerala were girls. The Union government has been urged to incentivise all states and Union territories to establish specialised cradle centres. Work is on to set up high-tech Ammathottil cradles in Idukki, Kannur, and Wayanad districts, and to restore non-functional cradles in places like Ernakulam.