An Indian woman who begs God for a son, so that she will not be hit and despised. Let 'her' live, written by Indian journalist Veena Krishna is the story which won a Radio Netherlands Worldwide competition about change.

By Johan Huizinga and Louise Dunne
 
"Share your World with the World! What do you want to change?" was the title of the Radio Netherlands’ competition. An impressive indictment of India’s child policies by Veena Krishna was the winning entry.
 
Her entry tells the tale of a woman who fails to bring a son into the world. It is accompanied by an evocative photo. In the lower classes in particular, women and girls are still considered inferior, so women are beaten, despised and neglected. This is the story of my cleaner, Ms Krishna explains in an interview with Radio Netherlands.
 
"It is about the woman who cleans my house. In fact these are her experiences. I want to make it clear to poor people that it does not matter whether you have a son or a daughter."
 
The woman already has four daughters and her fifth child is also a girl. "Not another daughter. I pity her and myself. Will they leave us alone?" the woman sighs.
 
Every birth of a daughter leads to the woman being beaten by her mother-in-law. The family do not so much as glance at the child and no-one asks how the woman will manage to feed and bring up all her children, writes Veena Krishna.
 
"To have a son you have to keep bearing children. And if you are unlucky, you are left with too many children to care for. That is the cause of many problems in India. So I hope information and education, which is currently lacking, will change this."
 
"What would you change?" was one of the main questions of the competition. Veena Krishna admits that it will probably be a long time before change is brought about. But she believes child policies in India have worked in the past.
 
"To change this the government and schools have to take action and educate people. That is the government’s task and as a journalist I can perhaps make a documentary to highlight the problem."
 
As winner of the competition, Veena Krishna will join Radio Netherlands Worldwide's editorial team for a week and see how the media works in this part of the world, in particular with regard to these kind of issues.