The share of male children among India’s newborns has registered a decline. The figure has dropped from 54% to 51.2% over four decades, according to a study by health researchers. This is welcome news since the dip is in the desired direction. India, after all, has had a worrying imbalance in its sex ratio: a 2022 report by the Pew Research Center pegged India’s sex ratio at birth over the previous two decades at 110 boys to 100 girls. This is consistent with other analyses. For instance, in 2024, the sex ratio of the total population in India, it was found, was 106.506 males per 100 females. In the last census, India recorded a sex ratio of 943 females to 1,000 males.

However, the findings of the new study — they were published in the journal, Scientific Reports — should not lead to any complacency in policy. This is because they have also revealed some challenges. For instance, the dip in the percentage of male children is not uniform. It shows variations — this is revealing — in terms of class and region. In the 2012-2021 period, the percentage of boys among newborns was 52.8% among the richest households: the corresponding percentages for middle-class households and poor ones were 52.1% and 51.1%, respectively. The northern parts of India — Punjab and Haryana are among these — the study found, continue to show a marked preference for male children. This can be attributed to the prevailing cultural preference that is, in turn, shaped by the patriarchal mindset. What is equally challenging is the role played by technology in this aspect. The conception of such legislations as the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act, which seek to put an end to the hideous practice of female foeticide by making it illegal to determine the sex of a child, was rooted to address the immoral application of technology, but their implementation and monitoring have been patchy, leading to the emergence of a black market in sex-selection practices. Worse, new technologies are posing a threat. For instance, when a couple chooses to get pregnant through in vitro fertilisation, a preimplantation genetic diagnosis test is carried out to check the embryo for genetic disorders. But it also determines — and is being wilfully used to determine — the sex of a child by conniving parents and doctors. Things are unlikely to change unless the embedded son-preference syndrome is redressed through a myriad interventions.