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G. Ramachandran

WHILE conception could indeed occur within and outside of marriage, the practice of sex-selective abortions is unambiguously associated with conception within marriage.

Sex-selective abortions are not as common in pregnancies outside marriage as abortions are, and sex-selective abortions are not as common in pregnancies outside marriage as they are in pregnancies within marriage. Has the girl baby, even before birth, become more vulnerable in a family environment characterised by marriage between consenting partners?

Pre-natal sex determination is illegal under the Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PNDT) Regulation and Prevention of Misuse Act, 1994. However, pre-natal sex determination tests are said to be used prevalently by married couples in search of a male child while consciously wanting to flush the female foetus down the drain. Quite clearly, the selective flushing of female foetuses down the drain cannot take place on a large scale without the participation — active and passive — of women.

Women are either less keen to bear girl children, or are goaded, coerced and encouraged by their families to flush the female foetus down the drain. Some cynics say that female foeticide is a lesser evil than female infanticide.

But female foeticide and female infanticide are both evil practices, and it is shocking that the family comprising man and woman is the stage, setting and forum for the practice of sex-selective abortions.

Whatever may be the cultural, economic and physiological circumstances, the impact of the family on fertility, birth of babies and sex ratio has become very significant. But the direction of the impact is not favourable to women.

The results of the 2001 census show a significant decline in the sex ratio in the 0-6 age group. A team of UNFPA researchers has studied the data generated by the National Family Health Survey in 1990-92 and 1996-98. The team then undertook a detailed study in 2000 in nine States that have a record of high rates of abortion.

The States studied were Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh. The UNFPA team found that Punjab and Haryana led in sex-selective abortions. Moreover, the UNFPA has since then traced the precipitous decline in sex ratio in the 0-6 age group to sex-selective abortions.

The UNFPA team says that sex-selective abortions in Haryana rose to 69,000 from 62,000 and from 51,000 to 57,000 in Punjab in six years. It also says that the fertility rate would have been 3.2 (instead of 2.9) in Haryana and 2.9 (instead of 2.2) in Punjab.

Demographers and population economists would have liked to explain the fall in fertility as the favourable result of rising prosperity. Fortunately, they have not. The method that married couples in Punjab and Haryana have adopted to keep birth rates down is chilling and horrendous. But the couples in Punjab and Haryana have been honest. They have not justified their method as a way to keep birth rates down.

The practice of sex-selective abortions in Punjab and Haryana is neither the major focus nor the minor focus of this article. It is most likely that the compulsions and circumstances that lead to the selective flushing of female foetuses prevail in other States too.

The UNFPA team says there is no consensus on the number of sex-selective abortions across the country since female foetuses are selectively flushed out by unregistered service providers, non-allopathic practitioners, paramedics and others.But what is disconcerting about the practice of sex-selective abortions in Punjab and Haryana is that it shows that general economic well being is not an important determinant of the well being and social standing of women.

Punjab and Haryana are among the most affluent States. Their indices of cost-of-living-adjusted relative purchasing power per million households (COLARPP) are very high. Delhi's COLARPP is the highest in India and is set to 100.

The median COLARPP of all States is 48. Pondicherry (48), Uttaranchal (48), Assam (48), Orissa (49), West Bengal (50), Andhra Pradesh (52), Himachal Pradesh (56), Karnataka (59), Rajasthan (59), Gujarat (61), Maharashtra (64), Goa (66), Haryana (68), Punjab (76), Chandigarh (89) and Delhi (100) have a COLARPP above the median. Delhi State, containing the Capital, has the lowest sex-ratio (821) in the country.

Why is it that economic well being has not had a favourable impact on the well being and social standing of women? Are families in the richer States not `happy families'? Surely, dowry cannot be such a formidable problem that female foetuses have to be flushed down the drains. Or, have women lost faith in India's ability to facilitate orderly, purposeful lives for all its citizens, male and female, young and old? Or, do more and more women feel that the disorderliness and lawlessness in India favour the survival of men over the long term?

Perhaps, the crassness is so intimidating that some women think female foetuses would be better off being flushed down the drain.If more and more women feel that India's disorderliness and lawlessness favour the survival of men over the long term, then the right question to ask is what women should do to make Indian society equitable, caring, orderly and law-abiding.

Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen's seminal work on gender inequality is very useful in this regard. Prof Sen treats the household as the central determinant of internal co-operation and internal discrimination between the sexes. Household inequality is included in his list of seven inequalities.

The others are mortality inequality, natality inequality, basic facility inequality, special opportunity inequality, professional inequality and ownership inequality. With the possible exception of natality inequality, all other inequalities relate to women after the girl baby is born. However, in the context of sex-selective abortions, the baby girl goes some other place.

If India's disorderliness and lawlessness favour the survival of men over the long term, then men have an implicit stake in supporting disorderliness and lawlessness. But women are mothers, wives, sisters and daughters of men with the implicit stake. Is it not time for the explicit stake of women in supporting orderliness and lawful conduct to prevail over the implicit stake?

Household equality can make a significant difference to women in India and India's women. Women can make India unconditionally equitable, caring, orderly and law-abiding.

(The author is a financial analyst. Feedback may be sent to indiagrow@sify.com)

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