Skewed Sex Ratio - Silent Emergency
Recently, there has been discussion in the media on India’s population future prompted by release of the Sample Registration System (SRS) Statistical Report (2018) and global population projections made by the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), US.
Status of India’s Sex Ratio and Fertility rates
- The SRS report estimated the Total Fertility Rate (TFR), the number of children a mother would have at the current pattern of fertility during her lifetime, as 2.2 in the year 2018.
- Fertility is likely to continue to decline and it is estimated that replacement TFR of 2.1 would soon be, if not already, reached for India as a whole.
- The report estimated the natural annual population growth rate to be 1.38 per cent in 2018.
- A comparison of 2011 and 2018 SRS statistical reports shows that TFR declined from 2.4 to 2.2 and fertility declined in all major states.
- In 2011, 10 states had a fertility rate below the replacement rate which increased to 14 states (including two new newly carved states i.e. Telangana and Uttarakhand).
- The six states with higher than national fertility rate (and their TFR) in 2018 are Bihar (3.2), Uttar Pradesh (2.9) Madhya Pradesh (2.7), Rajasthan (2.5), Jharkhand (2.5) and Chhattisgarh (2.4).
- The SRS reports show that sex ratio at birth in India, measured as the number of females per 1,000 males, declined marginally from 906 in 2011 to 899 in 2018.
- The UNFPA State of World Population 2020 estimated the sex ratio at birth in India as 910, lower than all the countries in the world except China.
Reasons for declining Sex Ratio
- Dependence of fertility on social setting and programme strength: The female education is a key indicator for social setting i.e. higher the female education level, lower the fertility.
- It implies that the illiterate women in the reproductive age group of 15-49 yearshave higher fertility than literate women in almost all states.
- The programme strength is indicated by the unmet need for contraception, which has several components and the most important of them is the proportion of married women who are neither pregnant nor amenorrhoeic and do not desire a child in the next two years or ever but are not practising contraception.
- The National Family Health Survey (2015-16) provides us estimates for the unmet need at 12.9 per cent and contraceptive prevalence of 53.5 per cent for India.
- Lack of access to Education: The child marriages are a common part of the Indian society and most of the girls are prone to the issue of child marriage at a very early age which makes them to stay away from the education.
- Economic Background: Poverty is one of the factor which is responsible for the declining sex ratio and a lot of girls are denied of nutritious food which deprives the women and girl child from a living a healthy life.
- Social status of women: In most parts of India, women are merely considered as an object and people are worried about the dowry issue with the birth of a girl child.
Challenges to improvement in Sex Ratio
- Increase in reproductive age group: It is believed that the population would stabilise or begin to reduce in a few years once replacement fertility is reached.
- It is not so because of the population momentum effect, a result of more people entering the reproductive age group of 15-49 years due to the past high-level of fertility.
- Peak in India’s population: The UN Population Division has estimated that India’s population would possibly peak at 161 crore around 2061 at the medium-fertility variant and will be lower by about 10 per cent at the low fertility variant.
- Gross imbalance in the number of men and women: There is a cause for concern because the adverse ratio results in a gross imbalance in the number of men and women and its inevitable impact on marriage systems as well as other harms to women.
- Declining Sex Ratio is a silent emergency: The declining sex ratio is a silent emergency but the crisis is real, and its persistence has profound and frightening implications for society and the future of humankind.
Initiatives taken by government against declining Sex Ratio
- Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao: It is one of the important campaigns introduced by the government to generate awareness and improve the efficiency of the welfare services meant for women.
- Sukanya Samridhi Account: The initiative aims at opening a new account for the girl child and the account can be operated by her after the age of 10.
- The Girl Child Protection Scheme: The scheme is aimed at preventing the gender discrimination by protecting the rights of the girl child.
- PCPNDT Act: The Indian government has passed Pre-Conception and Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques (Regulation and Prevention of Misuse) (PCPNDT) Act in 2004 to ban and punish prenatal sex screening and female foeticide.
Measures to adopted to improve Sex Ratio
- Emphasis on increasing female education and economic prosperity: The increasing female education and economic prosperity help to improve the ratio and it is hoped that a balanced sex ratio at birth could be realised over time, although this does not seem to be happening during the period 2011-18.
- Strengthening of programmes related to improvement in Sex Ratio: The programme’s ability to reach younger people and provide them with good quality reproductive health education and services needs to be urgently strengthened in various states.
- Delay in childbearing and space between children: The population momentum effect can be mitigated if young people delay childbearing and space their children.
- All-round realization of challenges: The challenges can be met by all-round realisation that even in the patriarchal set up, it is essential to maintain a natural balance between the sexes failing which not only the social system, but also entire economic system would get damaged beyond repair.
Road ahead
- There is an urgent need to reach young people both for reproductive health education and services as well as to cultivate gender equity norms.
- It could reduce the effect of population momentum and accelerate progress towards reaching a more normal sex-ratio at birth.
- In India, giving power to women at the local level led to increases in the provision of public goods, such as water and sanitation, which mattered more to women.
Next
previous
Latest News
General Studies