Sex ratio in 2001: good news or bad?

By Sudhanshu Ranade

CHENNAI, JUNE 20. Shooting the bearer of bad news may not be a good idea; but it is a popular one. This has often been said; so it hardly needs to be said again. However, for the past decade I have begun asking myself if the idea is really such a bad one after all.

Over the past few weeks there have been ever so many `good news, bad news' reports about the sex ratio as revealed by the 2001 census : reports by laymen like myself, by professional demographers, and even by the Census Commissioner himself.

The `bad news' is that there has been a fall in the sex ratio for children; in the 0-6 age group to be precise. In 1991, there were 945 girls for every thousand boys; but the figure for 2001 was only 923. This sort of bad news is easy to believe; day after day we hear more and more of girl babies dying of neglect, being deliberately starved or poisoned, left behind in a bus or train, or simply dumped in a trash can.

As if this were not bad enough, a great many people are alarmed at the very real possibility that murders of the unborn girl child over the past two decades are large, and rapidly increasing; because the technology required for determining the sex of the foetus has become easily accessible - not only in cities, but in rural areas as well, thus paving the way for `sex selective' abortions. Indeed, some enterprising doctors have even begun using mobile vans to fully exploit this potentially lucrative market.

In general, there are three reasons for the increased incidence of bad news; not only about the sex ratio, but also about any other subject you care to name. One, our mind set, our moral depravity, is going from bad to worse. Two, things are gradually getting better; but nevertheless seem to be getting worse because of increases in our awareness of them (thanks to the dramatic way they are forced on to our consciousness); and, because, as we become ever more civilised, ever more refined, as our standards rise, we are ever more outraged by our depraved tendencies; increasingly unwilling to put up with them. Finally, the `advance' of technology could be to blame; in the present case, it has made it easier for people to act on their preference for sons; easier for them to do away with a unwanted girl, if they choose to do so.

It is true that things are bad - and everyone believes that everything is getting worse; but what are the facts : are things getting better? or worse ?

The apparently `small' decline in the sex ratio, between 1991 and 2001, for the 0-6 age group from 945 to 923 is not to be taken lightly. If true, it means that we have allowed many millions more girls to die in this decade than in the one before; or killed them - before or after they were born.

But let us go a little deeper. The 2001 census was the first to separately tabulate figures for the 0-6 age bracket; because it was felt that leaving out data on children below 7 would give us a more precise idea of the extent of illiteracy. The fall in the sex ratio for the 0-6 age group was discovered by accident, so to speak. Earlier censuses did not separately tabulate figures for the 0-6 age group; they instead reported figures for the 0-4 age group, 5-9, 10-14, 15-19, and so on.

Before the results for 2001 were out, many professional demographers had been bombarding us with the `theory' that the fall in the sex ratio of the total population (from 934 in 1981 to 927 in 1991) must necessarily have occurred, or most probably occurred, because an ever larger number of girl babies were getting killed before they were even born; on account of female foeticide or sex selective abortions.

I, personally, had my doubts whether and to what extent these fatalities, before or soon after birth, could possibly account for a fall in the sex ratio for the total population, running as it did into well over 800 million people.

On looking through the data, I discovered to my surprise that both in 1981 and in 1991, at the all-India level (excluding the figures for Assam, which was not censused in 1981, and Jammu and Kashmir, which was not censused in 1991), the sex ratio for children aged 0-4 was better than the sex ratio for the 5-9 group. The ratios for the 0-4/5-9 in 1981 were 977.68 and 940.83 respectively; and in 1991, 954.56 and 937.97. This was a huge surprise; if girl babies were indeed getting killed before they were born or soon after, the 0-4 age group should have been precisely the one where the deficit of girls was the highest.

This discovery also meant that if one increased the lowest age group from 0-4 (as in 1981/1991) to 0-6, the sex ratio for children would necessarily fall regardless of whether little girls were getting better or worse off compared to boys, going by the pattern in both 1981 and 1991 of the large and puzzling decline in the sex ratio for children, as they moved on to an older age group. This is something that can easily be put to test. If someone now decides to use data from the 1991 and 2001 censuses to compute and compare the sex ratio for the 0-9 age group, rather than only 0-6, the `fall' in the sex ratio is sure to appear even larger.

Since access to and use of technologies for sex selective abortion are said to be increasing over time, it is odd that both in 1981 and in 1991, there were relatively more girls among the 0-4 age group (i.e. among those who were born later, in the second half of the decade), as compared to the 5-9 age group (i.e. the children who had been born earlier in the decade, when sex determination technology had not had a chance to spread so much).

One last thing; the `good news' about the increase in the sex ratio for the overall population between 1991 and 2001, should be taken with a pinch of salt; given the much lamented fall in the sex ratio in the preceding decade, between 1981 and 1991. I am not at all convinced that we were right to shed so many tears over the drop in 1991 as compared to 1981.

Examining `rates of attrition' for various cohorts over that decade (i.e. the size of the 0-4 age group in 1981 with the size of the 10-14 group ten years later, in 1991; and so on), I found to my surprise that there were 8.7 million more 10-14 year old boys around in 1991 than 0-4 boys in 1981. I simply do not understand where they could have come from.

The figure for 0-4/10-14 girls too was higher in 1991 than in 1981, by 4.5 million. Combining the 0-4 with the 5-9 group in 1981, there were 2 million more boys around in the 10-19 age group in 1991 than one would expect; even if not a single boy in the 0-9 age group in 1981 had died over the decade. The figure for girls, however, declined by 4.7 million; there were 85.9 million 0-9 girls in 1981, only 81.1 million of these were still around in 1991.

Given the large and unexplained relative `increment' of boys between 1981 and 1991, it seemed likely that the sex ratio for children, and consequently for the population as a whole, had actually been worse than reported in 1981. If one looks at the figures for each census from 1901 to 2001 (972, 964, 955, 950, 945, 946, 941, 930, 934, 927, 933), 1981 definitely seems to be the odd man out. This would, incorrectly, make 1991 look bad; and, correspondingly, make the 2001 results look good when compared with 1991. I have therefore now begun toying with the idea of shooting the bearers of good news as well.

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