The child sex ratio (CSR) in India has declined from 927 in 2001 to 918 in 2011 (girls per 1,000 boys) according to a new report entitled Missing Girls: Mapping the Adverse Child Sex Ratio in India (Census 2011). Of the total 640 districts in the country, 429 districts have experienced decline in CSR.
Of these 429 districts,
26 districts exhibited drastic decline (of 50 points or more), and 52
districts reported sharp decline (of 30-49 points).
The report from the
office of Registrar General & Census Commissioner shows that 13
out of the 35 states and Union Territories (UTs) have CSR lower than
the national average of 918 girls per 1,000 boys in 2011. The CSR
ranged from a maximum of 972 in Arunachal Pradesh to a minimum of 834
in Haryana. Jammu & Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, NCT of Delhi,
Chandigarh, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, Gujarat and Maharashtra have
recorded lower than 900 girls per 1,000 boys.
It has been found that
although the CSR for most of the tribal districts (having more than
25 percent tribal population) was above the national average of 918,
the situation significantly deteriorated in 2011. While in 2001, 120
tribal districts had CSR of 950 or more, in 2011 this figure unfortunately declined
to 90 districts.
Another report titled
Women and Men in India 2014 from
MoSPI shows that the bottom 5 big states in terms of
CSR (for the age-group 0-6 years) are: Haryana (834), Punjab (846),
Jammu & Kashmir (862), Rajasthan (888), Uttarakhand (890) and
Gujarat (890). The top 5 states in terms of sex ratio for the same
age group are: Arunachal Pradesh (972), Meghalaya (970), Mizoram
(970), Chhattisgarh (969) and Kerala (964).
Due to the weak
implementation of Pre-conception and Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques
(Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act, 1994 (PCPNDT Act), in-laws often
get to know the sex of the unborn child. Thereafter, it is followed
by provision of low quantity & less nutritious food to pregnant
and lactating mothers (at the place of in-laws) apart from
insufficient attention to maternal health & care, mental and
physical torture etc., all of which have a strong negative bearing on
women's health and survival and also on their children—unborn or
otherwise.
A report published
earlier entitled The Law and Son Preference in India: A Reality
Check by Advocate Kirti Singh (November, 2013) informs that the
two-child norm and the laws and measures to effectuate this norm has
resulted in son preference and daughter aversion as most people, if
they are forced to have a small family, automatically prefer sons to
daughters.
Concerned over the skewed
sex ratio, Minister for Women and Child Development Smt. Maneka
Gandhi has recently expressed that a programme for Beti Bachao Beti
Padhao (Save and Educate the Girl Child) may soon be started in North
and western states of India.
Latest available Census
data clearly shows that some of India's more developed states have
low overall sex ratio such as Haryana (879), Punjab (895), Uttar
Pradesh (912) and Gujarat (919), indicating that growth may not
automatically improve gender equality.
On the contrary, the top
5 states in terms of overall sex ratio are: Kerala (1084), Tamil Nadu
(996), Andhra Pradesh (993), Chhattisgarh (991) and Meghalaya (989) –
some among which are harbingers of human development and female
literacy.
Sex ratio is often used
as an indicator by social scientists to depict the level of gender
discrimination existing in a society. Although women are considered
to be biologically stronger than men in terms of survival and life
expectancy, gender discrimination often cuts short the life span of
the unborn/born female child in a patriarchal set up.
Overall sex ratio,
however, may not give a true picture of gender discrimination because
due to migration one may find that more women are left behind in the
rural areas vis-a-vis men, thereby, yielding high sex ratio figures.
Corollary to this, when more men flock to cities and towns for
livelihood, it results in low sex ratio in the urban areas.
Overall Sex Ratio -
Rural, Urban and Combined (1951-2011)
As per the Census 2011
data, sex ratio in urban areas is 929 females per 1000 males while in
rural areas it is 949 females per 1000 males (see the graph
above). Between 1951 and 2011, sex ratio has declined by -0.32
percent to reach 943 females per 1000 males.
Instead of relying on the
overall sex ratio, experts prefer sex ratio in the age-group 0-6
years so as to assess gender discrimination resulting in female
foeticide & infanticide. Also, the latter rules out to a great
extent the effect of migration (as discussed earlier). Low child sex
ratio (for the age-group 0-6 years) is an outcome of female
foeticide, which takes place because sons are preferred to daughters
for various reasons including to carry forward the lineage.
Effective advocacy and
policy implementations can take place only when good quality data and
acceptable gender-based indicators are available. However, one may
encounter a variety of problems that are associated with
indicator-based study of poverty amongst women such as choice of an
appropriate indicator, lack of correlation between various gender
based indicators, problems with the sources of data (such as
reliability), unavailability of data and qualitative versus
quantitative data. Therefore, one should be careful in choosing sex
ratio over other gender-based indicators to show gender
discrimination.
References:
Missing Girls: Mapping the Adverse Child Sex Ratio
in India (Census 2011)
Women and Men in India 2014, 16th Edition,
Chapter 1: 'Population'
in Women and Men in India 2014, 16th Edition
"The Law and Son
Preference in India: A Reality Check" by Advocate Kirti Singh,
United Nations, November, 2013,
Maneka Gandhi Releases
‘The State of the Girl Child’ Report “Pathways to Power”
More girls go ‘missing’;
sex ratio declines -Smriti Kak Ramachandran, The Hindu, 30 November,
2014,
http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/more-girls-go-missing-sex-ratio-declines/article6649019.ece
Image courtesy: Missing Girls: Mapping the Adverse Child Sex Ratio in India (Census 2011)
Image courtesy: Missing Girls: Mapping the Adverse Child Sex Ratio in India (Census 2011)