Parel shocker for the girl child ……Madhavi Rajadhyaksha | TNN
Mumbai: Until two years back, Parel seemed to love the girl child. The area recorded the birth of 1,275 girls vis-avis 1,000 boys in 2005, but the ratio has nosedived since. In 2007, only 885 girls were born per 1,000 boys in the Parel-Lalbaug stretch, just one rung from the bottom of the list.
If the citys skewed ratio of 921 girls born for every 1,000 boys in 2007 presents a grim picture, a closer look at the plummeting figures reveals another worrying trend. TOI has found that pockets of the city which seemed to favour the girl child in 2005 now show a shocking decline in the number of girls born.
Civic records show that sex ratios even in tony addresses such as Malabar Hill, Walkeshwar and Chowpatty have fallen drastically from 967 girls born per 1,000 boys in 2005 to 895 girls two years later.
The analysis comes at a time when a team from the Supreme Court-appointed National Inspection and Monitoring Committee is in the city and has sealed 17 sonography machines for not maintaining records as required under the Pre-Natal Diagnostics Techniques (PNDT) Act, 1994. Activists, who say the declining girl child ratio is shocking, blame the poor implementation of the law for the skewed ratio.
Experts also concede that differences within the city may emerge due to various factors such as mushrooming of sonography clinics (the misuse of the technology has often been linked to sex-selection practices), declining fertility rates and migration.
UNFAIR SEX RATIO
Experts also concede that differences within the city may emerge due to various factors such as mushrooming of sonography clinics (the misuse of the technology has often been linked to sex-selection practices), declining fertility rates and migration.
While the sex ratio at birth in Mumbai may not reveal significant differences with 917 girls per 1,000 boys in 2005 to 920 girls in 2006 and 921 girls in 2007, it is still lower than the national average of 934 according to the 2001 Census figures. Map the city and more differences emerge. The eastern suburbs, particularly Ghatkopar and Vikhroli, seem to be more biased against the girl child and recorded the worst sex ratio of 912 girls born per 1,000 boys in 2007. The island city and western suburbs fare marginally better, with 925 girls born in the same period.
However, there are shifts within the suburbs itself. For instance, the Bandra-Khar-Santacruz (W) belt has shown a decline in sex ratio from 1,227 in 2005 to 975 in 2007.
Citing the instance of posh areas recording missing girl children, advocate and womens rights activist Kamayani Mahabal says, The more rich you are, the more educated you are, the more is the discrimination against the girl child. This clearly indicates that there is no co-relation between education and literacy with sex selection. She attributes the disappearing girl child to increased access to technology and echoes activists when she says there is no implementation of the PNDT ACT.
A civic doctor, who did not wish to be named, said such statistical shifts could be attributed to shifting population within the city as well as the mushrooming of unscrupulous sonography clinics in certain areas.
Some parts of the city, however, seem to buck the trend. The G north civic ward (Shivaji Park, Mahim causeway, Dharavi), for instance, has shown an encouraging trend with the 878 girls born per 1,000 boys recorded in 2005 rising to 964 in 2007.
Calling the disappearing girls in the city a serious problem, director of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences Dr T Parshuraman offers another explanation. He points out that couples today have fewer children per family. There is no reason why the sex ratio at birth should vary so much, for instance in the eastern and western suburbs. When a couple has a single child, there is a greater chance that they would prefer a boy, he says, adding that the incidence of sex selection needs to be studied carefully.
Experts say the citys girl child map pleads attention. When you have so much technology, you need greater vigilance, says Dr Parshuraman. Mahabal, too, says conviction of erring doctors is the need of the hour.
