Well, you know what they say about optimists being people who have not got around to reading the morning papers. The morning papers continue to indicate that skewed sex ratios remain very much a part of our reality, with even the so-called progressive states like Kerala jumping on to the ultrasound bandwagon. Satish Balram Agnihotri in his work, Sex Ratio Patterns in the Indian Population (Sage), observes that the optimists betray a “mechanical application of the demand and supply theory” by assuming that grooms and brides are undifferentiated products in an unsegmented market. He points out that, in reality, the system is open and brides can be “imported”. This is already happening of course, as the strange “marriages” Womenless Haryana cobbles together by shopping for women from West Bengal and Orissa.

Agnihotri’s research leads him to conclude that the devaluation of the girl child in India will continue and that sex ratio decline is slowly consolidating into a serious sex ratio imbalance. He cites historical reasons why this process is so difficult to reverse, arguing that the dominant Indo-Aryan attitude to daughters has been shaped by three decisive factors: one, the use of iron for both the plough and sword; two, the cultivation of wheat which requires much less participation of women in agriculture; and, three, the need for expertise in warfare, involving horse-riding and chariotry. Getting the ethnographic underpinnings of the phenomenon right is a useful exercise because it explains social behaviour at various levels of society.

Certainly, one of the reasons why the issue has proved so intractable is that it is located in the private sphere of the family and the individual. Addressing the public consequences of private behaviour, which comes under the rubric of “family matters”, has always been a notoriously difficult proposition. Our continuing failure to address issues of dowry, domestic violence and rape — despite legislation, despite concerted social action, despite media focus — illustrates this eloquently. The family as traditionally served to naturalise socially dominant concepts and precepts, like the construction of wives and mothers as being duty-bound to further family status. Giving birth to sons and rearing them into manhood form part of that obligation.

... contd.