Andhra Pradesh And Tamil Nadu Worse Than Haryana In Sex Ratio At Birth: Report

Last week, the Women & Child Development Ministry celebrated National Girl Child Day, just days after that a new report has made a shocking revelation that in India the girl child ratio at birth (SRB) is declining. The data collated by the office of the Registrar General of India from the civil registration system (CRS) has revealed that many states in the country have seen a dip in the girl child sex ratio. Notably, southern states, which traditionally perform better in this area, have also seen the dismal ranking.

The report for the year 2016, showed that India’s Sex ratio at birth (SRB) the number of girls born every 1,000 boys is declining. It said that Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan had the worst SRB of 806 while the all-India figure stood at 877 girls per 1,000 boys. Meanwhile, Chhattisgarh has recorded the highest SRB ratio of 980. The average ratio of the country has also seen a dip in SRB from 903 in 2007 to 877 in 2016

Missing girls

Veteran economist and researcher Amartya Sen also once famously said that more number of girls are going missing. These missing girls are those who are not even given a chance to be born over male child preference. The report that is published annually claims that except Kerala, the sex ratio at birth in the southern states of the country has seen a dramatic dip over the last nine years. Among all the southern state, only Kerala, which always performed better showed an increase in SRB. In 2007 it showed 944 births and in 2016, 954- a ten-point rise.

Other southern states- Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu are among the states which have shown the sharpest decline over the period of 2007 and 2016.

In 2007, Andhra Pradesh recorded the sex ratio at birth at 974. However, it saw a dip in 2016 by 168 points and reached at 806 in 2016. During the same period, the sex ratio at birth declined by 108 points in Karnataka. Tamil Nadu came fifth on the list with a dip by 95 points from 2007 with recorded 840 births in 2016. Odisha’s child sex ratio at birth also fell by 61 points, showed the data.

The newly formed Telangana in 2013 had recorded child sex ratio at birth at 954, after nine years it dropped 73 points and reached at 881. Surprisingly, a few northern states have recorded a better number than Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. Punjab (857), Jharkhand (863) and Haryana (865) have performed better, however, they are also among the poor performers.

Northern states on the list

Sabu George, an activist focussing on the issue of falling sex ratios told The Times of India that there was a problem of declining sex ratios in southern states. However, the 2016 figures are extremely low. “I think there is a problem in the birth registration system in some districts in these states, which is pulling the overall ratio down,” he said.

The best performing states in 2016 included Sikkim (999), Nagaland (967), Arunachal Pradesh (964), Mizoram (964) and Tripura (917). The Andaman and Nicobar Islands (987), Chhattisgarh (980) and Daman and Diu (974) also performed fairly well.

The Logical Indian urges every family to preach humanity over gender disparities and make this world a better place for a girl child!

Also Read: Are We Putting Efforts To Save Girl Child? No. New Report Highlights Decline In Male-Female Sex Ratio