By Joseph Juhn
Impunity Watch Desk Reporter, Asia

2011 census reveals that boys are preferred to girls, leading families to abort girl babies (Photo courtesy of the Nation).

NEW DELHI, India – If you are a girl in India, you are less likely to be born. The figures speak for itself: the latest 2011 census show that the sex ratio, the number of girls to every 1,000, was 914 in the 0-6 age group, which is 13 less than the 2001 census.

As medical technology continues to improve and more commonly implemented in rural areas, the abortion of female fetuses has also increased. This is because technology has made it easier to detect the sex of an unborn child.

Lakshmi Rani, 30, is one of many women who was forced to abort her unborn baby, multiple times. From Bhiwani district in Uttar Pradesh, Ms. Rani’s first three pregnancies were terminated due to family pressure.

“My mother-in-law took me to the clinic herself,” she said. “It wasn’t my decision, but I didn’t have a choice. They didn’t want girls.”

She and her husband are pushing for another pregnancy and she prays that the next one will be a boy. Although sex determination tests, let alone abortion itself is illegal in India, women like Ms. Rani is powerless before family pressure and general societal preference of boys.

There is also a stark regional difference. The divide between the north and south has gotten worse as J&K’s child sex ratio fell steeply to 859, making it the third worst state after Haryana and Punjab. Just ten years ago In 2001, J&K had a better child sex ratio than the Indian average. With the exception of Himachal Pradesh, no state in the north now has a child sex ratio above 900.

The reasons behind the preference of boys over girls are complex, according to the Center for Social Research, a research organization in New Delhi. Ironically, the aborting practice happens in some of India’s most prosperous states — Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh — indicating that economic growth does not guarantee a shift in social attitudes. Ranjana Kumari, spokesperson for the research center gives several factors that may attribute to the preference of boys in many parts of India, especially the conservative north: sons are the source of the family income, daughters marry into another family and are not available to look after their parents, dowries make a daughter a liability and, in agricultural areas, there is the fear that any woman who inherits land might take that property to her husband’s family.

“It (the decline in child sex ratio) was expected, but it is a warning signal for the nation to wake up,” Ms. Kumari said, also adding that law banning sex-based abortion “is not stringently implemented”.

Her findings and facts lead to conclusion that India’s sex ratio is a feature not just of dictatorship and poverty. Unlike China, India is a democracy: there is no one-child policy to blame.

“The caution should be taken seriously. We are leading to a crisis situation,” she said.

For more information, please see:

The Times of India – Sense of Census 2011: Save the Girl Child – 1 April 2011

The Economist – Gendercide in India: Add Sugar and Spice – 7 April 2011

The New York Times – A Campaign Against Girls in India – 12 April 2011