Census 2011& India - 1.08 million missing girls (additionally during 2005-11) - a state wise analysis

In continuation of my article dated April 23, 2011 wherein in, I did try and highlight the basic salient features of population growth in India as per Census 2011 with specific reference to Child Sex Ratio (CSR) and a case study of Andhra Pradesh by examining the trends in CSR by doing a District-wise analysis, I will now try and calculate the number of girls which should have been there as per the CSR of 2001 census vis-a-vis what's there as per the CSR of 2011 census. In other words, the lesser number of Girls born as a result of decline in CSR during the decade.

It is to be kept in the mind that CSR is for the age-group of 0-6 years of children and thus, CSR will cover all the children born from 2005 onwards during the decade. Children born during 2001-05 will get reflected in the Sex Ratio of Population aged 7 & above. While the Sex ratio is available for population aged 7 & above and so is the actual number of persons aged 7 & above in the Census 2011, it will be difficult to segregate the proportion (& actual number) of children in the age group 6-10 years i.e. those who were born during 2001-05 and the CSR for children in the age-group 6-10 out of the overall population sex ratio aged 7 & above (which gets affected by otherfacors such as migration, gender based longivity among others) whose Sex Ratio is a part of over all CSR, based on the preliminary data of Census 2011 at this stage. I will, thus, confine myself to the CSR of chldren aged 0-6 years and the actual number of children in the age group 0-6 years which is available in the Census 2011 which means these are the children born from 2005 onwards.

Steps involved in calculating "the Missing Girls":
1. Calculate the point difference between CSR of 2001 and 2011. It shows the decline/rise in the CSR during the decade. For e.g. refer row 1 of the table below. The All-India CSR in 2001 was 927 girls for every 1000 boys born and it came down to 914 in 2011. It means a decline in CSR by 13 points or -13.
2. We know the number of girls in the age-group 0-6 years actually born (refer GIRLS column). We also know the number of boys actually born in the age-group 0-6 years (refer BOYS column) in 2011. Now, we calculate the number of girls that should have been born is the CSR of 2001 would have continued as it is i.e by taking a CSR of 927 and calculate the difference between this number and the number of girls actually born.

In other words, the simple formula followed is :
Number of missing Girls (taking 2001 as a base)= (CSR of 2011- CSR of 2001) /1000 * actual number of Boys (0-6age group)
for e.g. All-India = (914-927)/1000*82952135 = -1078378
It means that 1,078,378 girls are lesser due to the decline in CSR by 13 points during the decade 2001-11 for children in the age-group 0-6 years i.e. born from 2005 onwards during the decade. I call this as additional missing girls as the total number of missing girls if we calculate based on the decline in CSR from the natural Sex Ratio at Birth(SRB) of about 945 girls for every 1000 boys (or 105.9 boys for every 100 new born girls), the number of missing girls would swell to 2,571, 516 (or 2.6 millions) on a base of 82952135 boys born from 2005 onwards!

The number of 'missing girls' is calculated State/UT wise in a similar manner for all the States/UTs based on the Census 2011 figures and are placed here in ascending orders starting with the State where the number of missing girls is the largest.
UP with 266,104 has the largest number of missing girls followed by Maharashtra with 204668 missing girls and Rajasthan with 145086 missing girls.

A noteworthy feature is the improvement in CSR among the States which had the lowest CSR during the Census 2001 such as Punjab, Haryana, Chandigarh, Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh. While they continue to have the lowest CSR (in terms of actual CSR) in 2011, the trend seems to have reversed positively in favour of Girl child. For e.g. the CSR of Punjab has improved by 48 points fr0m 798 in Census 2001 to 846 during the Census 2011 resulting in 'net addition' of 76477 girls over the Boys born from 2005 onwards. It might be due to number of factors - the CSR was so low that it had caught the national attention and the State Authorities were forced to implement the PNDT Act with some seriousness. There also was better monitoring and a general awareness perhaps was created that sex detection is illegal and punishable offence. However, I am worried that such positivity in CSR among the States with lowest CSR should not be a result of number fudging!

Lets hope the implementation of PNDT Act improves all over the country. It is a powerful Act and we have seen the positive outcome in Hyderabad as a result of strict implementation of PNDT Act.