Rita Banerji © copyright 2008.

by Rita Banerji

The 2011 census data for India shows that 18 million girls were exterminated from the population before the age of 15 years.  People often assume that this is primarily due sex-selected abortions.  However, the age-wise analysis of India’s latest census data not only reveals that most of the girls are killed after birth, but that the killings actually increase with age!

For last 7 years I have consistently argued, that the government uses an extremely obscure and strange age range, 0-6 years, to determine child sex ratio.  What constitutues 0 age?  Fetuses? And why would the government put aborted female fetuses and girls killed after birth till the age of 6 years into the same ‘age’ category?  Moreover,  why is 6 years the cut-off age for the child sex ratio age?  Why not 0-2 years or 0-10 years to determine…