The New Nation - Internet Edition

THE number of girls to boys in India has hit a record low, British charity Action-Aid said as it urged the government of India to take 'sustained action' to prevent a lost generation of women. 'In a country with a long history of discrimination against women, the preference for sons over daughters has led to the number of girls under the age six hitting an all-time low' said Action-Aid in a report. Ratios of boys to girls aged 0-6 in four out of five states it studied in north and northwest India were now lower than at the time of the nationwide census in 2001 - and the gap was widening, the report said.

The report called on the government for enactment of tougher laws, if required, and enforcement of those banning prenatal sex detection and sex-selective abortion, describing their efforts to implement the legislation so far as 'woefully inadequate'. Attitude towards girls as financial burdens for families because of dowry pressures on the occasion of their marriage also needs to be challenged while the quality of and access to public care and state-run schools should be improved, the report added. 'It is clear that without sustained action on many fronts, millions more women will go missing in India', the report said citing figures from medical journal The Lancet that more than 500,000 female foetuses are being aborted every year at least.

Action-Aid members and Canada's International Research Centre interviewed families in more than 6,000 households and compared statistics with national census data. The researchers said that normally, there should be about 950 girls born for every 1,000 boys, but found that already low ratios of girls to boys from 2001 in the sites surveyed were now even lower, except for India's Rajasthan state. Kangra in India's Himachal Pradesh state saw the steepest fall from 900 to 789.