Regardless of skepticism about NFHS data, male-female ratio is improving

Objecting to what the report has not counted and what it has misses the point that India's gender gap is mending.

There is a mild controversy going on over the NFHS data on the sex ratio, reported by this newspaper. The NFHS has found that the sex ratio--males and females--has improved from 943 females for 1,000 males in 2011 to 1020 females for 1,000 males now.

The news report also says “the census projected that this would increase to 952 by 2036. There is a 29-point increase in the overall sex ratio from 991 in 2015-16 (NFHS-4) to 1,020 in 2019-21 (NFHS-5).”

Many people who study these things are sceptical. On the face of it their scepticism seems justified. Such a huge improvement in just a decade is nothing short of miraculous. 

But the controversy has also reminded me of something that happened thirty six years ago. I was on a practically empty Boeing 747 of an American airline from London to Washington. 

Out of sheer boredom, I walked back to the galley and asked the cabin staff--who were equally bored--how the airline decided how much of each type of liquor to load on each flight. Those days airlines would carry more than two dozen varieties. 

One of the cabin crew said it was a matter of counting the net consumption after the first flight had been landed. We only top up after that. 

What do you count, I asked. How do you decide what the leftover stock is, I asked. 

He whispered that the opened bottles that were still on the trolleys were not counted. They were the equivalent of goods-in-transit. 

Ever since then the process of counting something--what do you include and what do you exclude--has fascinated me because the problem is true of all things that are counted: copies of a title with a publisher; do you count what is out on consignment? Or ammunition in the army stores: do you count what’s with the field units? Or even samosas on the tray vs in the kitchen etc. How does the caterer count?

True, there are some clearly laid down norms for stock accounting purposes. But the problem of inclusion and exclusion remains an intractable one. Counting is not as easy as it seems. 

I mention this because according to the Director of the International Institute of Population Sciences, “Lots of institutions, the homeless, army (personnel), and hostel establishments, which are male-dominated, are not covered by this survey.” 

This sounds to me like the bottles left on the trolleys: there, yet not there. But even if you count the males who have not been counted, would it reduce the number of females who have been counted? Obviously not. 

Another institution, the Population Foundation of India has said “This is an unexpected trend, which needs further evidence and explanation.”

Here, it’s only the ratio and not the actual number of females that’s being questioned. That seems to have gone up which regardless of the rate at which it has gone up, is an absolutely good thing. Should we not acknowledge it instead of being grumpily sceptical?

Of course, someone can always say that the number of females actually counted is an exaggeration. There is no way of verifying that immediately. 

Without pushing the analogy too far, it seems to me that while some people are objecting to what has not been counted and others are objecting to what has been counted. This is the aircraft trolley bottles equivalent. 

But on the whole it’s not worth arguing about as long as the gap is narrowing. The important thing is that the male-female ratio is improving. That's what matters. The rest is time-pass.