For a change, girls outnumber boys

A recent study shows that Cyberabad possibly has a solution for female foeticide, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Sep 15, 2007, 04:08:43 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

From information technology to family planning, Cyberabad seems to be the leader.

A recent study has shown that the Andhra Pradesh capital possibly has a solution for female foeticide. In 2005, more girls were born than boys (1,014) girls to 1,000 boys) in the city which till 2001 had a sex ratio of 942:1,000.

The right ratio

• In 36 months preceding 2005, more girl births only in three months

• In 2005, more girls born in 8 out of 12 months. Child sex ratio for that year: 1,014 girls to 1,000 boys

How they did it
• Effective implementation of Pre-Natal Diagnostic Technique Act, ’94

• Tracking of all births

• Crackdown on malpractices in diagnostic centres, registration cancellations and fines

Effective implementation of the Pre-National Diagnostic Technique (Regulation and Prevention of Misuse) Act, 1994 and tracking of all births were among the initiatives taken to achieve the feat. Women and Child Development Minister Renuka Chowdhury told the Hindustan Times: “Now that Hyderabad has provided the solution, we will prepare a gender development index based on the model, for the states to adopt.”

Arvind Kumar, former district magistrate of Hyderabad, while addressing a gathering of IAS probationers at IAS Academy, Mussouri, explained how the government had found that the state’s 389 diagnostic centres were to blame for the falling sex ratio and how it crackesd down on these centres. Between 1991 and 2001, the sex ratio in Hyderabad fell by 21 percentage points.

“While in 72 per cent of cases, the addresses of the pregnant women were either not mentioned or not complete, in 91 per cent cases the details of the father of the child were not mentioned. Ultrasonography was conducted at random in 67 per cent cases without proper referrals. Alarming discrepancies were detected,” he said.

The government cancelled the registrations of 102 diagnostic centres and slapped a fine of Rs 10,000 as per the provisions of the law. “We made sure that killing a girl child was impossible in the city and its impact was evident in 2005 when more girls were born than boys,” he told HT.

Chowdhury agreed with Kumar that the Act had enough teeth to prevent female foeticide but felt the states had not implemented it with proper vigour. “I will soon ask the state governments to follow the Hyderabad model on institutional audits to prevent the killing of the girl child in foetus,” she said.

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

Check India news real-time updates, latest news on Hindustan Times and more across India.