RURAL MAHARASHTRA-(-Child sex ratio worse in Rural Maharashtra )

Child sex ratio worse in

                     Rural Maharashtra

Rural Maharashtra seems to love the girl child even less than the state's urban areas. In the most shocking blow to the girl child so far, the newly released provisional Census 2011 data shows that fewer girls are born in rural areas than in urban.The child sex ratio, which indicates the number of girls born for every 1,000 boys, has fallen from 916 in rural Maharashtra to 880-a drop of 36 points. In contrast, the child sex ratio in urban Maharashtra has dipped from 908 to 888 in the last decade.The director of Census operations in Maharashtra, Ranjit Singh Deol, told TOI that the child sex ratio of both urban and rural areas fell over the last decade. "While urban areas have fared better than rural areas, the child sex ratio has dropped in both. The ratio has fallen from 916 to 880 in rural areas in the last decade and from 908 to 888 in urban areas."

Social activist Sabu George, who was the first to move the Supreme Court over two decades ago against female foeticide, said, "Maharashtra has always been considered one of India's most liberal states for women. This was also reflected in its child sex ratio, which was in sync with the better ratio in the southern states. North has always had a poor child sex ratio especially in states such as Punjab and Haryana." But George said the 2011 provisional Census data showed a shocking transition. "If you look at the maps put up in the Census 2011 website, it seems that Maharashtra has joined the northern states."He fears that Maharashtra's notorious districts such as rural Beed, which has a child sex ratio of 789, will slip further. "Mumbai may also go the Punjab way in the next Census if corrective steps are not taken soon," George added.

One of the main reasons for the dipping child sex ratio, according to Dr P Arokiasamy of IIPS, is female discrimination worsened by low total fertility rate (the number of children a woman bears in her lifetime). "Two decades ago, the average number of children per woman in Maharashtra was three. Now it is either two or one," he said. Due to this preference for smaller families, he said, there is an increase in sex-determination and sex-selective abortions.

                                      Prof. John Kurakar