-The Indian Express Families have a preferred number of sons at any given fertility level as well as a preferred fertility level.   In his maiden Independence Day speech, Prime Minister Narendra Modi lamented the neglect of daughters, restrictions on their movements, parental attitudes that favoured sons, shameful rapes of girls and women, the lack of toilet facilities and sanitation. In a populist vein, he urged parents to treat sons and daughters...

-Down to Earth While northeast states such as Manipur and Nagaland have shown a sharp deterioration in child sex ratio, the skewed ratio has improved marginally in Punjab and Haryana The steadily declining child sex ratio in India has reached emergency proportions and urgent action must be taken to alleviate this crisis, warned a latest United Nations (UN) study. The report, released on Tuesday, has attributed much of the declining numbers to...

-The Hindu Ahmedabad: The Centre has indicated that it seeks to replicate nationally the ‘Beti Bachao Abhiyan' or ‘Save the Girl Child' campaign of the Gujarat Government. However, impact of the drive on improving the poor sex ratio in the State is still unclear with experts pointing out that the campaign has not moved beyond pursuing an awareness agenda. Prime Minister and former Chief Minister of Gujarat Narendra Modi started the campaign...

-The Indian Express     Mumbai: It's been eight months since the state government launched ‘Manodhairya Yojana', a scheme to provide monetary relief and rehabilitation for rape and acid attack victims, including women and children. But with little advocacy, lack of counsellors in civic-run hospitals, poor post-trauma support as mandated by the scheme, and most importantly, policy apathy, ‘Manodhairya' risks being a laudable scheme just on paper. AAMIR KHAN and TABASSUM BARNAGARWALA speak...

-The Times of India AHMEDABAD: In the age of khaps, village panchayats generally hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons, especially on matters of gender. But the sarpanch of Fatehgadh in Amreli is an exception. He wants to see more daughters playing on the streets of his village. Rattled by the scarce number of girls - the village has only 50 girls against 200 boys in the 0-18 years' age bracket...