if 120 mllion girls have disappeared – euphemism for murder – and 7 to 10 people are involved – 2 parents, doctors, lab techs, nursers, other members of the family — How many murderers does India have ?

My column in today’s DNA

Currently, the gender ratio in India is 915 girls to 1,000 boys (in the below 6 age group). In 1991, that figure was 947 girls to 1,000 boys; in 2001, it was 927 girls to 1,000 boys. What should be the gender ratio? Ideally, it should be 950 to 975 girls per 1,000 boys. But statistics like 915 per 1,000 boys doesn’t give us the real picture. In 1991, there were 4.1 million missing girls; by 2001 that had risen to six million; and as per the current census, there are 7.1 million missing girls. In 1991, Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen put the figure of missing girls at 100 million. The number has gone up by 2011.

There are more missing girls in prosperous, educated areas than in poverty-stricken zones. Missing is the euphemism for murdered. Unlike other parameters — such as education and health that have improved with time and development — the attitude towards the girl child has become worse with development.Who all are involved in these murders? The answer: parents, families, doctors, and lab technicians. For every girl that is selectively murdered, there are at least seven to 10 other people who are complicit in the murder. Most of the times, it is covered up.

There is another facet to this figure. It doesn’t include the deaths that have been declared as ‘natural’. There are reports of newborn girls being swathed in cold towels and left in the open. The girls fall ill — usually with pneumonia — and are taken to primary health centres where the doctors give medicines. The medicines are thrown away, the girls get worse, and die. The doctors report this as death by natural causes. Different methods adopted in different parts of the country — feeding the girl rice husk so that she chokes and dies, feeding her poison mixed with castor oil, leaving her out in the sun to die of sunstroke… Different methods with one end: murder.

The full pieces is here