Story in numbers: The puzzle of India's sex ratio

What does India's sex ratio over the years tell us? That there's good news and bad news. The good news is that against the current all-India average of 944 women per 1,000 men, not all states are badly off. The bad news is that states that showed a healthy balance between women and men have gradually slid to a point where they now mimic the all-India reality that is weighed against women.

How could this have happened? Conventional wisdom says improvement in the sex ratio in favour of women is a function of development and literacy. But, in an industrialised state like Maharashtra, which showed 82 per cent literacy in the 2011 Census, the sex ratio has slid. In the so-called matrilineal societies, especially in the North-East, in Manipur, Mizoram and Nagaland, the sex ratio began by being in favour of women but has turned against them over the years.

In Uttar Pradesh, on the other hand, despite low levels of development and industrialisation, the variation in the sex ratio has remained more or less steady.