An unexpected twist to the tragedy of tsunami survivors in Tamil Nadu is men and women asking for their sterilisations to be reversed. The state government announced this week that families who lost all of their children would be offered free reversals. A local NGO says that more than 600 women and 100 men were eager to take advantage of the offer. Couples whose daughters survived are not eligible, so some are using compensation payments for the death of sons to pay for the reversals.

Couples are also turning to IVF clinics which guarantee a male child. The Washington Times interviewed one couple who lost a 14- year-old son to the tsunami. The wife is having her tubectomy reversed and hopes to have another son. “Otherwise life would be meaningless for us,” she says. Her husband plans to go to a Bombay IVF clinic instead of buying a new truck with his government payout. I know it is illegal to choose the sex of a baby, but I don’t care because the tsunami took away my only son,” he says.

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