Counting women

THE women of India have been counted - but apparently, they still do not count enough. Even as declining population growth rates and increasing literacy rates are being lauded with the preliminary results of the 2001 Census being announced, the depressing news is not very different from 1991 - women in India remain a minority.

The sex ratio has improved marginally, from 927 women to 1,000 men in 1991 to 933 women to 1,000 men in 2001. But this is nothing to get excited about; in 1981, there were 934 women. And at the turn of the century, there were 972 women to 1,000 men. So we still have not caught up.

But what we know as only the tip of the iceberg so far is the shocking decline in the ratio of young girls to boys in the age group below seven years. The national average stands today at 927 girls to 1,000 boys as compared to 945 in 1991. But this is a "national" average. Data from the States is already showing up a horrifying scenario. In Punjab, for instance, there are only 793 girls to every 1,000 boys in the 0-6 age group. Seven hundred and ninety three. If the national average for the sex ratio of girls and boys is 927, then where are the 134 girls out of every 1,000 boys in Punjab?

It is a well-established fact that even though more boys are born than girls, the latter are sturdier and should survive infancy better than boys. But not in India. Here, all natural laws are defied. Girls continue to be killed before they are born, immediately after birth or through neglect in the first few years of their lives.

Neither literacy nor prosperity seem to have made a difference. Look at Punjab. Here is one of India's better-off States where the literacy levels are reasonably high. Yet, ironically, the spread of modern medicine has also brought with it the spread of modern techniques to eliminate girls. No one needs to be reminded that this is happening despite the ban on sex pre-selection techniques.

So how does one explain economic progress and literacy coupled with this negative attitude towards girls? A comparison between Punjab and Kerala makes these questions even more difficult to answer.

The National Family Health Survey (NFHS-2) for 1998-99 provides some interesting data to assess some of the census figures. For instance, if you compare Kerala and Punjab, there is some startling data on issues such as women's autonomy.

In a survey on the percentage of women participating in decision- making on their own health, NFHS data shows that 78 per cent of women do in Punjab compared to 73 per cent in Kerala. This difference is apparent also when you look at the percentage of women who have access to money - 78 per cent in Punjab compared to 66.2 per in Kerala. In the latter, 7.2 per cent were not involved in any decision-making compared with only one per cent in Punjab.

In Punjab, 77.3 per cent of the women are exposed to TV compared to 62.4 per cent in Kerala. And the median age at first marriage is comparable in both States, 20.2 years in Kerala and 20.0 in Punjab. Kerala, of course scores in literacy levels with only 12.6 per cent of ever-married women between the ages of 15-49 being illiterate as compared to 38.8 per cent in Punjab.

But does this odd mixture of greater autonomy in women in Punjab compared to higher female literacy in Kerala make a difference when it comes to attitudes towards the birth of a girl, or to the status of girls as they grow up and become women? The jury is still out on this question.

Yet, as the Census 2001 data comes in, the tragic reality about the unchanging state of women's and girl's status in so much of the country must make us pause and think. Why, despite all the efforts made to promote the interests of the "girl child", we find ourselves facing a world where fewer girls survive.

Of course, the answer is not far to seek. For even if you convince parents that girls are precious, wonderful creatures to be cherished and loved, they also know that these little girls must grow into a world where there is price tag fixed on them. If the parents cannot pay that price, then the girl must pay for it later on in her life, when she leaves her parents' home to enter her marital home. Dowry deaths and harassment continue; the evil has penetrated even those communities where dowry was not a custom. Read the crime briefs in any newspaper and you will note the universalisation of the dowry phenomenon.

And one might add, the universalisation and spread of technologies that control not the population, but only one segment of the population.

KALPANA SHARMA

E-mail the writer at ksharma@vsnl.com

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