Beastly Cityscapes

India's first census this millennium has begun to tell its first stories. The cruellest of them, perhaps, is the tale of the many girl children who've gone missing in the past decade. Unwanted female foetuses, dead, killed. And this is not, as we had thought, just in the country's backward, rural areas, but much more so in our urban centres—in the cities and towns of our most prosperous states.

And this pattern to India's prejudice against the girl child, say experts, is becoming clearer, sharper as detailed data continues to emerge from Census 2001. Released earlier, the provisional census data had already shocked by showing that India at present has only 927 girls for every 1,000 boys in the 0-6 age group, worse than the 945:1,000 ratio of the 1991 census.

More recent data and analysis is now bringing out the fact that, contrary to assumptions, female child 'deficit' is much higher in the urbanised 'progressive' parts of our country; the male-to-female sex ratio for the 0-6 age group being 1,000:903 for urban India and 1,000:934 for its rural counterpart. Also, that it's in the cities and towns of some of our richest states like Punjab, Haryana, Gujarat and Maharashtra that the girl counts are the lowest (see box).

"Access to doctors, financial wherewithal to use their services for sex-selective abortions through techniques such as amniocentesis and ultrasonography have obviously all added up to this sorry situation in our better-off cities and towns," reasons Suman Parasher, in charge of gender issues for Census 2001. The two-child family norm adopted by many families for some time now, she adds, might also have added to the female child decline in the sex ratio: "After all, the way it's been projected, the ideal family, at best, can have only one daughter among the two kids its supposed to have, and any more must be done away with."

Science and technology—'progress', in other words—have made it so much simpler to do away with the girl child. In fact, though the same motives that abet female infanticide incite sex-selective abortions, the latter seem so much less horrendous. Parents today can distance themselves, even feel guilt-free, as they hire the help of professionals who use scientific techniques, advanced hardware and skills to sanitise the process of eliminating the girl-to-be. Daughters can now be killed even before they are conceived. For a fee, there are doctors who will determine gender through sperm selection at the embryo stage.

Reason why activist George Sabu, along with some NGOs, filed a public interest litigation (PIL) in the Supreme Court in May 2000. The Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PNDT) Act, 1994, prohibiting determination and disclosure of the sex of the foetus, the PIL pleaded, was not being implemented. It also insisted that even techniques of pre-conception sex selection be brought under the pndt Act's ambit.

"Thanks to a positive verdict, Parliament amended the Act, and the amendments became 'operable' from February this year," says Sabu. "Yet, mobile clinics with ultrasound machines are still making visits to our villages and smaller towns, and their impact will be felt in the next census."

Satish Agnihotri, an expert on declining sex ratio in India currently with unicef Kolkata, says now that the "epicentres" of female child deficit have been located in our urban, prosperous regions, "we need next to move to a mix of possible, even if partial, solutions to mitigate the situation, before rural areas begin mimicking this phenomenon vigorously." His advice, in the short term, is to strive for universal coverage in survival inputs like immunisation, supplementary nutrition and birth registration to minimise the gender gap.

Girl children usually face discrimination in accessing these inputs, and universalisation benefits them."In the longer term," Agnihotri concludes, "we need to create conditions to minimise the 'unwantedness' of a girl child. This necessitates economic and physical security being guaranteed to women." The real challenge, therefore, would be to change the mindset of people in the cities, where the beast appears to have set shop.