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India’s gender imbalance ‘worst in recorded history’

The 2011 census in India has revealed that the gender imbalance is at its highest level since records began being kept at the country’s independence in 1947, reports LifeSiteNews.com.

The average gender ratio in the country declined to 914 girls aged six and under for every 1,000 boys.

India conducts a census every ten years. According to 1991 census, the age 0-6 sex ratio was 934 girls to 1,000 boys, which decline to 927 in the 2001 census.

Dr. Gursharan Singh Kainth, director of the Guru Arjan Dev Institute of Development Studies in Amritsar, remarked in an article in Eurasia Review: “A cultural preference for sons and the increasing availability of prenatal screening to determine a baby’s sex have helped contribute to a worsening in the ratio, which has been deteriorating rapidly even as the ratio for the population as a whole has improved.”

“More worrying,” Dr. Kainth pointed out, “places that used not to discriminate in favour of sons… have begun to do so. Economic success seems to spread son preference to places that were once more neutral.”

“Sex selection is now invading parts of the country that used not to practice it. Indeed, as the average family size drops in India, the preference for sons only intensifies. It is sons who inherit land, pass on the family name, financially provide for parents in old age and perform rituals for deceased parents.”

Some areas in the country, which Dr. Kainth described as the “Bermuda Triangle for girls” in India, register only 774 girls for every 1,000 boys born.

Dr. Kainth expressed deep concern over the “600,000 Indian girls [who] go missing every year.”

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TAGS: India gender imbalance abortion Dr. Gursharan Singh Kainth prenatal screening

[04/18/2011]

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