One for the girls: Poor sex ratio underlines Delhi's social regression

One of India’s most prosperous states with the country’s second-highest literacy rate has demonstrated why higher income and education do not necessarily translate into progressive social attitudes. The Annual Report on Registration of Births and Deaths in Delhi, released last week, reveals that the state that houses the national capital has seen an alarming drop in the sex ratio for the fourth consecutive year. From 933 females per 1,000 males in 2020, the ratio fell to 920 in 2024. This has come after a steady rise for eight years from 2012 to 2020. Experts have explained multiple reasons for the decline. All of them point to the depressing reality of regressive social attitudes that privilege the boy child over the girl. 

Dramatically falling fertility rates, for example, may be one contributing factor. India’s total fertility rate (TFR) fell below the replacement to 2.0 in 2021, with Delhi recording a TFR of 1.2 by 2023, the lowest in the country. With women having fewer children, the prevailing preference for the male child tends to get magnified as couples across the income and education spectrum explore ways to maximise the desired gender outcome per pregnancy. Delhi’s rich have long beaten a path to Thailand, where there is no ban against genetically determined IVF (in-vitro fertilisation) treatment, to ensure the birth of a boy. But even for those lower down the income scale, the magnitude of the fall in the city-state’s ratio suggests that the enforcement of a three-decade-old national ban on sex-selection tests has grown lax and that prospective parents are leveraging other legitimate workarounds. 

This much was evident from a September 22 directive from the Delhi government, asking for all tests, wherever clinically indicated, to be carried out only within Delhi in registered genetic laboratories that are duly approved under Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Technique Act, 1994. The ban, which represents the Delhi government’s response to the alarming sex-ratio report, applies to tests to check for foetal abnormalities and lawmakers suggest that they could be used as a way for prenatal sex-determination tests to make a comeback via out-of-state tests. As a way of monitoring, the state government has also asked genetic clinics, laboratories, and counselling centres to submit monthly reports. 

Strengthening legal deterrents in this manner may be necessary to ensure that loopholes in the law banning sex-selection tests are closed. The tougher task that political leaders in the state, which has ironically seen four woman chief ministers, must pursue is mobilising and educating society to ensure that discriminating against the girl child is not just a moral problem but also counterproductive. Campaigns such as Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao have proved reasonably persuasive in presenting the advantages of educating girls. Today, India has growing cohorts of women in professions that were once all-male preserves — corporate leadership and boards, combat positions in the military, pilots, engineers, economists, accountants, scientists, and on the shop-floor. Women have played their role in bringing home Olympic medals in such “masculine” sports as boxing, weightlifting, and wrestling. Given this record, it may make sense for the Delhi government to invest in an intensive campaign that presents the girl child on a par with her brother.