A study conducted by Dr Prakash C. Gupta and Dr Sree Vidya Subramoney from Healis–Sekhsaria Institute for Public Health, Mumbai, which was published in the Indian Journal of Medical Research — highlights the worsening sex ratio in an urban set-up.

The study also highlights the role of technology, ultrasound in this case, in bringing about a difference in sex ratio at birth. The study, which was conducted in Mumbai, indicates that ultrasound examination during pregnancy is almost universal. About 1,200 middle and lower-class women were recruited on a house-to-house basis in Mumbai and observed during the study. The Healis study found that 92 per cent of the 1,217 women who were observed in Mumbai reported one or more ultrasound examinations during pregnancy. There has been a three- to four-fold increase in the use of ultrasound for purpose of sex-determination among middle and lower-class women in Mumbai.

The study revealed that the sex ratio did not vary much with educational status or socio-economic status or parity, and greater differences in the ratio were seen with the number of antenatal visits for ultrasound examination.

Despite the Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PNDT) Act, 1994, which prohibits abortions in case the fetus in the womb is identified as a female, and also curbs the practice of sex determination of the fetus through sonography scans, there is a growing incidence of such tests, leading to abortions.

Every year, about one million female foeticide cases, where the unborn child is aborted just because it is identified as female, occur in India, despite the act. About 10 million female fetuses have been aborted in India over the past two decades. Neglect of the girl child also results in a child mortality rate of 20.6 per cent in the case of girls aged up to four.

“The girl child is the most vulnerable member of society in India,” says Dr Prakash Gupta, director, research, Healis-Sekhsaria Institute for Public Health. “The gender disparities extend to all spheres, starting from birth and including the social, political, economic, and demographic aspects of her life. Female feticide extends gender discrimination further, in that it starts as early as prenatal life.”

This, he feels, has unfortunately been facilitated by the advancement in technologies that enables the detection of the sex of an unborn child and subsequently selective abortion of female fetuses.

The sex ratio has become more skewed towards the male child in India in recent years. The number of girls per 1,000 boys in the 0 to six age group has been declining sharply; it was 962 in 1981, 945 in 1991 and 927 in 2001. The discrepancy is more acute in urban areas (down to 906 in 2001 from 959 in 1981) than in rural areas (963 to 934).

City not immune

SHOCKINGLY, the bias against the girl child is evident the most, not in some remote Bihar or Rajasthan village, but in India’s financial and commercial capital, which many boast is the most westernised Indian city. The sex ratio in Mumbai is 898 girls for 1,000 boys, one of the lowest among the metros. (Delhi takes the cake — in some posh south Delhi localities, the ratio is as low as 798).

‘Laadli Alliance,’ an NGO, recently surveyed 40 sonography clinics in Chembur and found none of them followed the rules laid down in the PNDT Act, which bans sex determination tests and lays down strict norms for diagnostic clinics. According to the law, every diagnostic clinic must display in English and the local language a notice stating that sex determination is banned and illegal.

There are over 1,150 diagnostic clinics in Mumbai offering sonography, but are banned from doing sex determination tests. But a lax administration, which does not have the wherewithal to monitor the activities at the clinic, has resulted in a thriving underground business for sex determination tests, which later lead to abortions.