Sex ratio sees sharp decline among Muslims

Compared to other religious groups, the Muslim community has witnessed the sharpest decline in sex ratio — dropping from 968 women for 1,000 Muslim men in 2004-05 to 922 in 2009-10.

Updated on: Jul 25, 2013, 02:22:19 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Compared to other religious groups, the Muslim community has witnessed the sharpest decline in sex ratio — dropping from 968 women for 1,000 Muslim men in 2004-05 to 922 in 2009-10.

A report by National Sample Survey Office shows that the Muslim sex ratio suffered due to a huge fall in the number of females in rural India.

In 2004-05, there were 968 women for 1,000 Muslim men in rural areas which dropped to 921 in 2009-10. The drop is more drastic considering there were 990 women for 1,000 rural Muslim men in 1999-2000.

Sex ratio in Hindus also fell. In rural areas, there were 961 women for 1,000 Hindu men in 2004-05 which dropped to 949 in 2009-10.

However, the sex ratio in rural Christian community rose from 994 in 2004-05 to 1,012 in 2009-10.

The overall sex ratio for India in 2009-10 was 947 women for 1,000 men whereas for Muslims it was 922.

In urban area, the drop was less with 932 women for 1,000 Muslim men in 2004-05 which declined to 923 in 2009-10. In 1999-2000, the sex ratio was 912.

In the urban Hindu community, the sex ratio dropped to 902 women for 1,000 Hindu men in 2009-10 as compared to 912 in 2004-05.

Once again the Christian community came out on top with 1,012 urban women for 1,000 men in 2009-10, up from 1,000 in 2004-05.

India’s sex ratio as per 2011 Census was 940 females for 1,000 men, but data categorised along religious lines has not been released yet.

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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