THE news from Indias 2011 census is almost all heartening. Literacy is up; life expectancy is up; family size is stabilising. But there is one grim exception. In 2011 India counted only 914 girls aged six and under for every 1,000 boys.
Without intervention, just a few more boys would be born than girls. If you compare the number of girls actually born to the number that would have been born had a normal sex ratio prevailed, then 600,000 Indian girls go missing every year. This is less distorted than the sex ratio in China, but whereas Chinas ratio has stabilised, Indias is widening, and has been for decades. Sex selection is now invading parts of the country that used not to practise it.
Indias sex ratio shows that gendercide is a feature not just of dictatorship and poverty. Unlike China, India is a democracy: there is no one-child policy to blame. Although parts of the country are poor, poverty alone does not explain Indias preference for sons. The states with the worst sex ratiosPunjab, Haryana, Gujaratare among the richest (see article), which suggests distorted sex selection will not be corrected just by wealth or government policy. But it can be corrected.
(Via: Ian Narbeth)