The All India Democratic women's Association (AIDWA) on Friday expressed deep concern at the Census 2011 revelation that the child sex ratio had dropped from 927 to 914 girls per thousand boys, confirming the worst apprehensions of those working to uphold women's rights. An AIDWA statement said the statistics once again raised serious questions about the direction of development which was leading to “growth” without social justice. The continuing devaluation of...

Census data released on Thursday has brought some cheer with the revelation that the population growth has finally slowed down in India. Yet, it also pointed towards an alarming fact that the sex ratio in the age group between 0-6 has fallen. Even though, the people claim that they no longer differentiate between male and female offspring, doctors have a sorry tale to narrate. Homemaker, Sangita Acharya said that her five-year-old daughter,...

The Union health ministry registered only 107 cases of female feticide under Section 315 and 316 of IPC in 2010. This is an abysmally low figure in a country which scientists believe has seen over 10 million female lives lost to abortion and sex selection in the past two decades. A few years ago, an Indo-Canadian scientist had reported in the Lancet that pre-natal selection and selective abortion was causing a...

Sober Reflection     * Invoking a clause in the Panchayati Raj Act, panchayats in Punjab are going dry     * The resolutions have to be adopted by two-thirds majority at panchayat meetings     * The excise department has had to shut down 32 liquor vends and relocate 15 of them     * Liquor consumption is high in Punjab: per capita consumption is 12 bottles a year *** It's the state that gave the nation the Patiala...

With the provisional figures for the 2011 Census sounding an alarm over the falling child sex ratio, it's a good time to look at who really is responsible for this. Who's committing female feticide and infanticide? Available figures show that it's not the poorest and least literate people and communities who are responsible; to the contrary, the reverse is true. The 2011 numbers show that the states with the worst child...