City sex ratio perks up: More girls born in ’08

NEW DELHI: The capital has, for the first time ever, recorded a positive sex ratio. Almost 19,000 more girls were born in Delhi in 2008 than the year before, taking the ratio to 1,004 girls for every 1,000 boys.

School Girls

Senior officials were quick to credit the numbers to the Delhi government’s Ladli scheme — which provides parents incentives throughout the girl’s education.

In 2007, Delhi’s sex ratio at birth stood at 848 girls per 1,000 boys against a national average of 933 (which in turn is way below WHO’s prescribed ratio of 952). In 2008, 1.67 lakh girls were born in Delhi, against 1.48 lakh in 2007.

Chief secretary Rakesh Mehta said the figure clearly manifested a dip in female foeticide and infanticide. “The fact remains that despite our best efforts, 40% births in Delhi happen at home and earlier there was no way of ensuring that the girl children were actually born or allowed to live after being born. After Ladli, those births are getting registered because the Rs 1 lakh that the girl will get under the scheme when she is 18 is not bad money. She can get herself a good husband.”

However, officials involved in the compiling and analysis of the statistics — submitted by the chief resistrar of births and deaths of the planning department — cautioned that it would be premature to assume a decrease in female foeticide. “A trend of 50 years does not go in a year. Moreover, if you look at the sex ratio, it is actually worse in posh colonies, where the parents anyway do not qualify for Ladli. It is a little illogical to assume that Ladli has curbed female foeticide in those classes too,” said a senior official pleading anonymity. “The way we are interpreting the figure is simply that there is an increase in the registration of births of girls.”

In order to qualify for the Ladli scheme, a family’s annual income has to be less than Rs 1 lakh a year. Ironically, the 2001 census clearly showed that the sex ratio is worst in middle class and upper middle class localities, including Punjabi Bagh, Greater Kailash and Malviya Nagar.

Under the Ladli scheme, every girl child is entitled to Rs 6,000/5,000 at the time of birth, depending on whether the baby was delivered in a government hospital or elsewhere. Then onwards, the government deposits Rs 5,000 each at the time of admission to class I, VI, IX, X and XII. The money is kept as a long-term fixed deposit in the name of the child who can encash it when she turns 18.

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