However, having said this, it also needs to be acknowledged that the PCPNDT Act has not met with significant success, a fact graphically illustrated by the data provided by the minister of state for health, P. Lakshmi, in Parliament last month. While acknowledging that the sex ratio in the age group 0-6 in the 2001 census was 927 per 1000 boys, as compared to the 1991 figure of 945 girls, she went on to state that 402 cases had been filed under the PCPNDT Act. Of these, 140 were for non-registration of ultrasound clinics, 135 for non-maintenance of records, 61, for communication of sex of the foetus, 36 for advertising such services, and 30 for violations of the act. The minister did not specify the rate of conviction, but it is so low as to be almost insignificant. Dr Baljit Singh Dahiya, a former director-general of health services in Haryana, did succeed in getting a doctor and his assistant jailed under the PCPNDT Act, but even he acknowledges that lack of proper monitoring and implementation are major loopholes in the act and believes that profiling pregnancies and births at the local level is the only way to fight female foeticide.

There can be no denying the link between proliferating ultra-sound facilities and declining sex ratios. Pune’s Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics mapped the correlation and found that the average sex ratio for districts in Maharashtra with more than 100 sonography centres was 901, while those with fewer centres had a ratio of 937. Thanks to the great persistence and efforts of anti-sexing activists, detailed regulations governing the use of sex determination technology are now there on paper. Clinics are required to maintain records, and an ‘appropriate authority’ is required to inspect them regularly. The idea is to make a low-risk, high-profit venture into a high-risk, low -profit one.

... contd.