Pithoragarh and Beed new culprits in vanishing girl child story

Pithoragarh in Uttarakhand and Beed in Maharashtra are among several districts in India where vanishing girl child is a new phenomenon.

Updated on: Jun 23, 2011, 22:39:54 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Pithoragarh in Uttarakhand and Beed in Maharashtra are among several districts in India where vanishing girl child is a new phenomenon.

As per 2011 census, child ratio in zero to six age group was 914, lowest since Independence, as compared to 927 in 2001 census.

The number of girl child below six years of age has fallen to 800 for 1,000 boys in 2011 as compared to around 900 in 2001 in these districts.

"It is one of the sharpest falls in the child sex ratio for any district in India," said Dr Sabu George, an activist working in the area of vanishing girl child in India.

Beed had witnessed a dip of 93 points from 894 girls for 1,000 boys in 2001 to 801 in 2011. Pithoragarh had 902 girls for 1,000 boys in 2001. A decade later it fell to 812.

Both these districts are away from traditional hotspots – Punjab, Haryana and Delhi – but the census validated the claim of activists that sex determination malaise was fast spreading in the country.

A recent study published in Lancet had shown that between the 2001 and 2011 censuses, more than twice the number of Indian districts showed declines in the child sex ratio.

"Each 1% decline in child sex ratio at ages 0—6 years implied 1·2—3·6 million more selective abortion of girls," the study said.

Varsha Joshi, Director of Census Operations (Delhi) blamed the poor implementation of law to prevent female foeticide as a cause for more selective abortions in India. "The law is not being implemented fully and until that happens, child sex ration would be on a decline," she said.

In between two census, Pithoragarh and Beed witnessed a demographic and economic change. With it came a number of private diagnostic clinics with ultrasound machines and its obvious impact was visible in the findings of 2011 census. "Prosperity is turning out to be biggest reason for selective sex determination," George said.

Even in southern states of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, girl child ratio has witnessed a fall in districts where prosperity has increased. For instance in Karur district of Tamil Nadu, the dip in girl child sex ration was of 62 points whereas in Ariyalur district it was of 57 points.

The new district wise census data shows similar trend in richer districts of Andhra Pradesh such as Warangal, which had best child sex ratio in 2001 for any district in India. Two districts of Manipur in north-eastern India also fall in the same bracket.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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