Rashi Aditi Ghosh/Zee Research GroupIndia fares second worst among the 30 most populated countries in the world when it comes to the sex ratio.
According to the 15th issue of Women and Men in India report (released in October 2013) by statistics and programme implementation ministry, sex ratio in India was recorded at 94/100 men. The statistics ministry has culled the data from a report by United Nations Statistics Division.
As a matter of fact, the overall sex ratio performance of India in 2012 even lags behind its neighbours -Bangladesh (98) and Pakistan (97).
Amongst the BRICS nations, all except China (93) scored better than India. While sex ratio in Brazil and Russian Federation was recorded at 103 and 116, South Africa scored 102 per 100 men respectively.
Globally amongst 30 most populated nations, the Russian Federation leads with highest sex ratio followed by Japan (105), France (105), Italy (104) and Germany (104) per 100 men in 2012.
Reasoning lack of adequate moral education in Indian education system, Dr.Smita Suresh Awachar from department of Sociology, Dr. B.A.M University, Aurangabad said, “It is time to rethink about our primary responsibility to teach moral values to our children. Unfortunately the moral education curriculum in India is only limited to religious studies. In my view, gender parity part should be made compulsory in every Indian school.”
The grim reality of declining sex ratio in India is also raised in another report called Primary Census Abstract by Census of India. According to Census report, child sex ratio (0-6 years) in the country has declined from 927 in 2011 to 919 in 2011.
The reported further showed that the sex ratio crisis was comparatively higher in rural areas than urban areas.
While the child sex ratio in rural India declined from 934 in 2001 to 923 in 2011, urban area reported a decline from 906 in 2001 to 905 in 2011.
Not only this, another report called Sample Registration System (SRS) shows that India’s birth sex ratio has fallen to 893 girls registered for every 1,000 boys born. This figure is much lesser than the overall child sex ratio of India at 919.
The report further added that a remarkable improvement in birth registrations was reported from Assam, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Nagaland than previous years.
Talking about the improvement in sex ratio scenario in Assam, Prof. Govaradhan Ram from department of sociology at Assam University said, “Sex ratio in Assam has improved because of presence of tribal population. The status of women in the tribal societies is comparatively better than that of the women in general society because of the low prevalence of evil practices like dowry and male child preferences.”
