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Resource centre on India's rural distress
 
 

‘Frightening’ failure to protect girls Child sex ratio lowest in 50 years, census shows by GS Mudur

The lowest child sex ratio in 50 years revealed by the 2011 census reflects India’s failure to stop selective abortion of female foetuses despite laws against sex selection and campaigns to promote goodwill towards girls, sections of doctors said.

The 2011 census released today by the registrar general of India has shown that the ratio of girls to boys up to six years of age has dropped to 914 girls for every 1,000 boys in 2011, from 927 girls counted in the previous census of 2001.

The sex ratio across all ages has improved since 1991, rising from 933 females to 1,000 men in 2001, to 940 females in 2011. Public health experts say the sex ratio across ages may reflect the trend of men dying earlier than women.

But the decline in child sex ratio has persisted unabated since the 1961 census. While the child sex ratio in 2011 has increased in Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Mizoram, Tamil Nadu, and Andaman and Nicobar islands, it has decreased everywhere else.

Doctors who have campaigned in the past against sex selection believe the 2011 figures represent continued sex selection through ultrasound scans followed by abortion of female foetuses even though India has outlawed sex selection.

“This census has frightening figures,” said Sabu George, an activist who has spent more than two decades investigating and documenting sex selection across India. “It seems that along with scanning technology, sex selection has spread everywhere.”

What was once believed to be concentrated in northern Indian states — Haryana, Punjab, and Rajasthan — and selective pockets of southern India appears to have expanded across the country. The child sex ratio in Bengal has dropped from 960 to 950.

India’s health ministry has prescribed an elaborate procedure that requires all medical ultrasound scan machines to be registered and all scans on pregnant women to be documented with detailed history and address of patients. But anecdotal accounts from patients and sting operations by activists over the past several years indicate that sex selection continues despite penalties.

“The law is not being implemented — that’s it,” said Puneet Bedi, a doctor in New Delhi who has in the past used birth records to show evidence of sex selection. “To say that this is a social evil and we need to change attitudes is to evade accountability.”

“Putting the blame on social attitudes is an escape route that people exploit to falsely justify a mass medical crime,” Bedi told The Telegraph.

Research studies have in the past indicated that skewed sex ratios could increase anti-social activity and violence in society. When men outnumber women, the extra men are unlikely to find partners and are likely to become marginalised, particularly in societies where marriage is nearly universal and accords social status, researchers at the University College, London, UK, had warned in a study five years ago.

In a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in August 2006, international health research specialist Therese Hesketh and her colleague had said that growing number of men with no marriage prospects will lead to greater anti-social behaviour and “ultimately present a threat to the security of society.” The Telegraph had reported on the Hesketh’s work in August 2006.

Some public health experts have argued that a decline in the child sex ratio may be the result of the neglect of girl children in the early years after birth — presumably leading to higher proportion of deaths among young girls than among young boys.

This would suggest that government campaigns aimed at parents and emphasising that young girls should be as precious as young boys haven’t worked. But activists and sections of doctors believe neglect of girls is an unlikely explanation.

“There is no real evidence that the neglect of girls is more now than it was a few decades ago,” said Bedi. “On the other hand, we all know that sex selection technology has spread across the country.”