Thank God I am a Woman!

No I didn't get a sex change but it's the catch line at the launch of the Spring/Summer Collection of a woman's clothing brand.
Today while watching news I saw the shocking news of female infanticide still prevailing in Rajasthan. In today's world where we as Indians are talking about the great progress we are making as a nation news like this makes my head hang in shame. Will we blame the government for this? Well yeah if anybody wants to take the supposition in that direction then sure as usual we can blame it for this too by contending that not enough is being done towards education improvement in the hinterlands of the country. However, I believe government cannot do everything in this matter. It is the society and the people which have to make the paradigm shift in thinking and break these chains which are termed as traditions. Its the new generation of Indians which have to break out of these molds in which some of our archaic unreasonable "traditions" try to bracket us in. Keeping our cultural traditions alive is absolutely fine but basic human emotions, human right - the right to live can never be sacrificed in the name of demonic practices camouflaged as "traditions".
We still have popular TV serials like "Is desh mai na aana Ladoo" which make the practice of female infanticide as their punchline. I don't follow the serial and maybe it carries a social message pointing out the evils of this social curse but the couple of episodes I saw I didn't get the message. Probably in matters like this subtlety doesn't work.
Yesterday I was sitting with friends and heard about colleagues at work who are still thinking in terms of "arey yaar meri beti hai. mujhey uskey liye bhi tu sochna hai". When we have city bred, highly educated professionals living abroad talking in these terms one can understand how deeply ingrained the malaise runs in our society.
Will we ever reach a stage where women in India would be able to say "Thank God I am an India woman" and not worry about being termed "manhoos"?