POPULATION-INDIA: Prosperity Blamed for ‘Missing Girls’

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Apr 4 2001 (IPS) - Results of India’s latest decennial census seem to confirm what demographers have always suspected — that poverty is not responsible for the country’s worsening gender ratio.

Rather, prosperity has increased the deep-rooted social bias against the girl child, seen in the fall in the number of girls for every 1,000 boys, in the last 10 years.

Provisional results of the headcount held in February, show a national improvement in the adult sex ratio from 927 women for every 1,000 men a decade ago, to 933 women per thousand men.

But any cheer on that account was diminished by statistics showing a drastic decline in the child sex balance, attributed to discrimination against the girl child.

The number of girls for every 1,000 boys in the under-six year age group, has fallen from 945 in the year 1991 to 927.

The worst offender was the farm prosperous northern state of Punjab with just 793 girls for every 1,000 boys in the under-six age group.

In Punjab and neighbouring Haryana state, also famed for its farm abundance, the adult sex ratio too was less than the national average.

While Haryana now has 861 women for every 1,000 men as compared to 865 in the 1991 census, figures from Punjab show a decline from 882 to 874 women for every one thousand men, over the last ten years.

Other large states in northern and central India — Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh — too recorded adult sex ratios, which were less than the national average.

The overall improvement in the adult sex ratio was due to the better performance of the southern states, with an average of 968 women per one thousand men.

Southern coastal Kerala, India’s most literate state, was the only to show a natural balance favouring women, with 1,058 women for every one thousand men.

Ironically, demographers and social scientists attribute the sharp drop in the number of girl children to the increased reach of modern medical care facilities in the villages of the mainly rural country.

Among other things, this has made it possible to determine the sex of the unborn child. Sex-determination clinics are specially popular in the northern, farm-prosperous states.

According to Renuka Dagar of the Institute of Development and Communication, based in Chandigarh — the capital city of both Punjab and Haryana — modern sex determination methods are primarily responsible for fewer girls being born in these states.

The Green Revolution, which brought farm prosperity to Haryana and Punjab three decades ago, also increased the preference for male children in these largely rural states, says Dagar.

“The girl child is also discriminated against after birth in terms of medical services, mother’s care and education and her identity is negated at every stage in her life cycle resulting in life-depriving outcomes,” she adds.

However, demographers like Mari Bhat at New Delhi’s Institute of Economic Growth, argue that the sharp decline may simply be the result of better data collection in the latest census.

But Bhat agrees that female foeticide has grown in the country, specially in Punjab and Haryana.

Bhat also suggests that voluntary limitation of family size by Indian couples may be producing the same results as China’s compulsory one-child policy.

China’s one-child policy is blamed for the large number of female foeticides and killing of girl infants in that country. Latest Chinese census figures indicate that as many as 117 boys are born for every 100 girls.

The state of Delhi, which hosts India’s national capital, also showed a declining adult sex ratio, with 821 women for every 1,000 men. This fell from 827 women in the last census.

According to Prem Aggarwal, president of India’s leading medical professionals’ association, married couples in Delhi have access to highly sophisticated methods of sex selection.

The state governments of Haryana and Punjab are carrying out mass awareness drives to change social attitudes toward girls.

India’s leading health NGO (non-governmental organisation), the Voluntary Health Association of India, is using a popular Punjabi play to mobilise school children in the state to help combat discrimination against girls.