There is a job vacancy in the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC). The right person should be female, pregnant and have spirit. The pay is Rs 15,000 for a day's work.

Sounds attractive, doesn't it? But for seven years, this 'post' at the Family Welfare Department of the PMC has remained vacant.

In a scheme introduced in 2004 by the state government and run by the PMC, a pregnant woman stands to make Rs 15,000 in a day by approaching sonography clinics and squealing on them if they do tests to determine the gender of the unborn child.

The job simply requires the pregnant woman to offer her services as a decoy to the PMC to investigate the misuse of sonography machines.

Parents who do not want a girl child get the gender of the foetus determined from unscrupulous sonography clinics and then go for an abortion if it is a girl.

"We get several tip-offs that certain clinics are misusing sonography machines to tell expecting parents the sex of the foetus. This is punishable under law, but we need evidence. We need a pregnant woman to do this sex-selective test there and then testify in a court of law," said Dr Vaishali Jadhav, PMC assistant medical officer, who handles sex selection issues. "But despite offering Rs 15,000 for a single day's work, no woman has come forward."

Dr S S Ambekar, assistant health officer, State Family Welfare Bureau, said that the situation is not much better at the state level.

"Even in the entire Pune district, including rural areas and neighbouring towns, only 15 decoys were found in the past seven years. Not a single decoy was from within city limits. Now we have proposed a hike in the incentive for these women, besides agreeing on separate allowances for travel, food, and other perks."

Ambekar added that the budget plan for the coming year also mentions that the women will be given allowances for spy cameras used during investigations.

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