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‘Rising Sons’ and ‘Setting Daughters’: Recent Trends of Child Sex Ratios in Indian Population

Despite century old concern and debate child sex ratio patterns have shown an alarming increase over the last two decades, more so during 1991 to 2001. The pattern of increase in child sex ratio though erratic up to the first half of the last century, shows consistent rise at least since 1961. As these groups are the ‘feeder source’ of adult population in future, such trend if unchecked, ‘will continue to haunt the society in decades to come’ until and unless corrective measures are taken. Growing child masculinity in contemporary India and its regional penetration forced the policy makers and demographers to recognize the reality of human interferences behind the recent increase in child sex ratios. Out of the different types of interferences, most talked about is the ‘sex selective abortion’ that gained currency during 1980s and more so in the 90s. However the practice of sex selective abortion of unwanted foetus is still more pronounced in the north and north western1 part of the country more so in some relatively prosperous areas or among the prosperous households. Employing spatial interpolation technique (say, kriging), the present paper tries to analyze the geographical structure of child sex ratio and its changing pattern over time. The analysis indicates, far from being random, the child sex ratios in India seem to be continuous over space showing robust clustering of high masculinity in child population on one hand and its systematic (spatial) increase on the other. The spread as well as intensity of growing masculinity in child population clearly endorses that from a regional perspective the problem regarding excessive maleness in the population is rapidly being surfaced as a national problem needs to tackle with greater resources. Such spatial patterning of child sex ratios clearly hints that diffusion of sex selection might be well entrenched in Indian population with sufficient degree of regional diversity. The study endorses the importance of contextual policy and advocacy measures to arrest the increasing trend of masculinity as it will affect population dynamics not only in the regional or national context but also in the broader spectrum of international arena. This should be a matter of concern for policy makers, researchers and activists alike.