"Missing Girls" Phenomenon in India

The " Missing Women " phenomenon is a widely discussed topic especially in Nobel laureate Amartya Sen's paper. The 2011 Indian census has further alleivated this highly prejudiced aspect of the Indian Society. " Missing Girls" in the population is an issue not only in India, but also in other countries like China, West Asian ( Arab nations). This was a problem in Korea earlier , but with the economic development of the region the problem has been sorted.

Both India & China are much touted as the economies of the future with growth rates double of the World GDP growth rate. The question is how much more developed should we be to give respect and protection to the girl babies? Does increase in GDP Growth rate really affect female infanticide ? Here are some facts.

• Haryana & Punjab are relatively the richer states in India, but scrores worse in protecting its girl babies..
• Kerala, a foreign remittances based state has the best sex ratio
• Indian NRI's in USA score low in sex ration and has dipped further as compared to earlier census

Its hard to believe that economic growth would be the single factor. What is more important is education and a shift in a deep psychological attitude towards woman.We see woman work in all fields of life these days. Actually the poorer they are the more they work, whether it is as house help, low level civil work , activities like agriculture, fishing etc and save more money for their family than their male counterparts.

The deep rooted " Dowry " system is another main reason for such vices. Girls are considered as taking away the family heirloom whereas Boys bring money from other families.This is more prevalent in the north. What is worst is that this practice is so much publicized and well known and there is hardly any action against that . The groom's parents consider it their right to demand dowry and the bride's parents consider it their obligation.Guests for the wedding revel in the party and love to hear about the rich presents given.

Hope that soon there would be some young men who can stand upright on their own and support their family without the bride's father 's hard earned money. I cant understand how men with all their giant sized ego actually admit that he needs that money.

Speaking about psychological shift, it is education , freedom of speech and media which can bring about this shift. Look at the myriad serials that are aired post 7.00 PM in all those chanels. It all revolves around sari clad , home bound, oppressed & depressed women. Why cant it show a progressive woman who handles issues related to work place & her home with grace and poise ? Does only teary eyed girls rake in the TRP ratings and moolah ?  Is it a psychological vaccum that we have which needs to be filled seeing depressed woman fighting amongst themselves on whimisical issues ?

With the trend of 2 or 1 child per family, the pressure to choose boy babies is even more. There is an increase in girl children left at orphanages. A good measure would be to have orphanages interact with IVF centres, it may atleast increase the adoption rate.

If the sex ration continues in this manner, another social issue which could come up in the next 20 years is frustrted & depressed Men in the 20 to 45 years age group. Some parts of China already report about 20% excess males in their population and there have been reports of men in parts of Haryana not finding brides to marry in their community. Some socialists term this as " Testosterone Glut ". This may affect in more crimes against woman and other habits like wives sharing.

The laws of nature are impartial and give equal probability for both sex offsprings with a simple XY chromosone and XX chromosone combination. As always human tinkering with nature causes adverse results which are too difficult and beyond our capability to fathom. Hope we realize before it is too late as making demographic corrections needs decades of change.

Few Numbers

Female literacy ratio as per 2011 census is 65.46% as against 82% in males, working on increasing female literacy and girls enrollment in government schools is a key area for improvment. The sex ratio for India is 940:1000, Paksitan : 952 : 1000, world ratio : 1000: 1001