The Girl/Boy Thing

“Where have all the girls gone?” trumpets a headline in an India newspaper (either the Times of India or the Hindustan Times, my notes don't show which). Ha, you know where the girls have gone. They are being aborted or otherwise disposed of in a mad-dash race to produce boychicks. OneWorld South Asia reports that the girl-boy ratio in India now stands at 927, next to the bottom in the world rankings, behind Pakistan and Nigeria, ahead only of China (link). Moreover the trend seems to be down: in all but three of India’s 28 states, the ratio is worse in the latest numbers than it was ten years before. Ratios seem to be worst in the north (Punjab takes the prize); ironically, part of the problem seems to be increased wealth—you have to have spare cash to by pre-natal diagnostic services.

Aside from the sheer indecency of all this girl murder, there are practical issues. A society with a lot of unattached, testosterone-poisoned young males is a society in trouble: places like the Punjab (798/1000) seem to be just cruising for a bruising.

One puzzle seems to be the apparent absence of the laws of supply and demand. We do read of Punjabis trying to buy brides from Bihar. But why don’t Indian parents wake up to the fact that having a girl baby might just be a profitable investment?

There isn’t much sign of this kind of demand motivation just yet: Edward Luce in In Spite of the Gods (2007) reports that the use of dowries may actually be increasing (a dowry as a prestige good: if you can demand/pay one, you are obviously one of the top dogs).

So far I’ve seen only one strong hint of any counter-trend, but it comes from a sincere source: the comics. It’s a strip where the guy says he is thinking of getting married and invites applicants to tell him how much dowry they will pay. “No bidding war?” his buddy asks. “Not working out the way I expected.” No, I should say not.

Fn.: one place where the sex ratio has actually improved (though still not to parity) is the southwestern state of Kerala, long a showcase of good government. Kerala stands unique among world states, I believe, as the only one in which a communist government was actually voted out of power. Do these not stand as the world’s most incompetent communists?