Questioning the sex ratio and reflexive assumptions: India census 2011

Our gender ratio is now 912 female kids to every 1000 male. Female foeticide is a bitch. No pun intended. Sex abortions are illegal in India. I am totally against them, though my views about making a law of it are not kind.

However, has there been any research to rule out other factors? Say, the possibility of medical/changing genetics related factors?

Female foeticide is essentially a private crime, so its difficult to know if someone does it. It may possibly be rampant in rural India, though I did not see such desire personally, not that anyone will discuss it with me….

However, in the last four years, among my friends in the city, there are twice as many boys born as girls – often within a year of marriage or 3 years of previous child – not enough time to kill a female pregnancy and do it again. Many of us are ones who actually had a girl preference, and extremely unlikely to kill an unborn girl baby. Loads of people on my facebook friends list itself. I know I wanted a girl till I fell in love at first sight with my scrawny wailer and decided not to ask for a refund. Changed my mind on a dime, I did, but till then, I wanted a girl.

Of course, I understand that I am not the measure of what all want. I am only pointing out that there are more boys even among those with a girl preference, or those who are neutral. Small sample, yes.

India’s overall gender ratio is 940 females to 1000 males – improved from 933 females to 1000 males.

We have 158.8 million kids under 6 years of age, which is about five million less than the previous census. Apparently, either abortion or birth control has been busy, considering that our overall population has increased by more than 181 million during that same time. They are 13.1 of the population while in 2001 they were 15.9. So it isn’t as if only girl children are decreasing, children as a whole are decreasing with girls at a higher percentage at 3.80 than boys at 2.42. We are talking millions of kids here. If they are being killed, it would be a massive scandal.

Not a process of denial, but it is a massive scale of sex abortions we are talking about. Even if parents kept it quiet, clinics would have made headlines one way or the other, if nothing, then through reputation as places where people could still avail of such “facilities”.

The other thing here is medical and sociological factors. The numbers being attributed to gendericide are taken from statistics for age group 0-6. A three year old girl dying of neglect skews this ratio in the same way as an unborn female pregnancy terminated. Are there other factors like malnutrition or abuse involved, where a girl child is likely to be taken less care of?

Joel Dousset examines some of these factors in a chilling article We are a Nation of Daughter killers – Affirms India’s 2011 Census. Bringing up data relevant to negligent homicide where girls under 5 are 40% more likely to die of neglect or deprivation than boys within households [2007 UNICEF Report], homicidal violence where these girls are 21% more likely to die from violence in their own homes [2011 joint report by Indian Council of Medical Research and the Harvard School of Public Health] and premediated muder in the form of baby girls dying 4-5 times more than boys from diseases like pneumonia or diarrhea [Study by the Registrar General of India published in the Lancet], he shows that it is not only about terminated pregnancies.

He brings in a chilling quote from Gita Aravamudan’s book Disappearing Daughters that is a slap of horror on our society.

“[To avoid arrest] families adopt more torturous methods of killing [infant girls]…Female infanticide I found had become more ‘scientific.’ Inducing pneumonia was the modern method. The infant was wrapped in a wet towel or dipped in cold water as soon as it was born or when it came back home from hospital. if, after a couple of hours, it was still alive it was taken to a doctor who would diagnose pneumonia and prescribe medicine, which the parents promptly threw away. when the child finally died, the parents had a medical certificate to prove pneumonia.  Sometimes the infant was fed a drop of alcohol to create diarrhea: another ‘certifiable disease.’ (pg.22)

[Updated – 1st April 2011 – READ the article]

Another anomaly that comes to mind is that in many other aspects, the conditions for women are much improved. It doesn’t make sense that a society where conditions for women are improving kills its female babies on such a stupendous scale. Surely we haven’t started killing MORE girls after doing it was banned?

• The literacy has overall improved from 9.21% from 64.83% in 2001 to 74.04% in 2011. The female literacty levels have improved by 11.79% from 53.67% in 2001 to 65.46% in 2011 compared with an increase in male literacy by 6.88% from 75.26% in 2001 to 82.14% in 2011 – almost at twice the speed. Most of this increase is inevitably kids.

Also, are we being complacent in blaming this on choice alone and not looking at other possible factors? There are many illnesses that are gender specific, or gender biased. Is this also a health crisis?

I cannot help think that in the process of creating laws and micromanaging people’s procreation tendencies, there have been things we have missed. Be them factors that could explain such imbalance or creating introspection and reflection around the sanctity of life rather than banning certain kinds of killing. Either abortion is considered illegal, or abortion of any sex is considered legal. Then, talks of equality make people find out more.

Right now, the fight for gender equality in children is among pregnant women and their doctors/techinicians. This can’t be right. This can’t be the only threat resulting in such a drastic difference. Anything that is a danger to a child below six has an impact on this ratio. While female foeticide is responsible for quite a few of these, I think that we have found one target to blame all our problems on and are living in blissful indifference – the problem is taken care of. There are laws. The cops will take care of it. This law has done more harm than good, by absolving the nation of any guilt and transfering the responsibility to one segment of its population.

Somewhere, this willingness to ignore is also a residual unimportance for females in our minds. Why are we not investigating this further? In my eyes, its simple. If the cops are shutting down such clinics where they find them, and the problem continues, we MUST look at all reasons females die more than males. Be it researching hospital birth records to see if there are patterns, medical records where an illness might manifest more in girls enough to be a problem, social initiatives to promite dignity…. we can’t just sit on our hands and say…. oh, the government will do something about it. You’ve got kids. You’ve been a kid. You live around kids. Its your problem too.

I have always said that as long as our “solutions” are based on problems, they will never fix anything. Ask Einstein. You cannot fix caste by creating reservations on the basis of caste, and you can’t prevent gender discrimination by creating laws based on gender. The issue is not in the mechanism of the killing, but in the desire to kill.

It appears that this census agrees. There were laws. Every hospital and healthcare testing facility has large, visible posters disclaiming that they will not determine gender. Pregnant women can’t have tests done without signing disclaimers, etc. And this is even before anyone asks for it. Yet, these are the numbers we have.