Resumo de Men Without Women

WITH the Government planning to introduce a two-child norm with serious disincentives attached for violators, it would do India good to look at what China's one-child norm did to its demographic profile.
The two countries, which between them are home to a sizeable chunk of the world population, have one other thing too in common: their traditional bias against women. However shameful India's treatment of the girl children may be, China, after its stringent one-child norm, has a worse record: it has the world's most imbalanced gender ratio.
China's census in 2000 shows there are 20 per cent more boys than girls in the group zero to four. The balance is even more extraordinary in seven provinces of China, which have 28 to 36 per cent more boys than girls in this age group. Against the previous record of 100-107 boys, the sex ratio has presently fallen to 107-120 boys per 100 girls. This serious imbalance has worsened during the last two decades, says Judith Banister, a demography specialist working in China.
One of the major causes of the low count of girls in China, she says in a study, is the one-child norm, combined with the bias against girls. This results in unchecked abortion of the female foetuses and the death of girls from health and nutrition neglect. Isn't this a familiar story in India?
The consequences of the "missing girl syndrome" have not yet been felt, in its entire enormity in India or in cultures in East and South Asia where a strong anti-girl bias exists.
But Valerie Hudson, professor at Brigham Young University, United States, has interesting predictions of societies where there would, in due course, emerge a large surplus of men. Studying the unintended fallout of family planning policies in developing countries, she says that when the State limits the number of children and where sex selection tests are easy to access, the sex ratio will turn negative in course of time. In 2000, China's sex ratio was 944 and India's in 2001 was 933 (compared with 1,029 in the U.S.).
The reason for this abnormal demographic phenomenon is apparently simple enough, according to Hudson. When couples were free to have half a dozen children there was a natural mix of boys and girls. When they were restricted by the State or by economic compulsions to one or two, they made sure they produced only sons. In China, sex selection test centres are available easily and without taboo, as in the Punjab and Haryana.
Let's look at what experts say are the social repercussions when there are not enough women for the larger number of men. Societies with a large number of men tend to experience more crime, unrest and violence, as predicted by security experts a year ago in The Economist (June 22, 2002).
Very soon they said, China will have an estimated 30 million "unhappy, unmarried" men; but their unhappiness would be of a different kind than that of unhappy married men. These unhappy, unmarried men could be kindling a political revolution at home. Deep, large-scale unrest could well have an impact outside, they warned ? the Chinese government may decide to use these surplus men ? these men without women for military activism.
Nearer home, the recent marriage practice adopted by the Gujjar community of Rajasthan could well spread into the larger context, if States like Punjab, which has 793 girl children in the zero to six age group, to 1,000 male children, Chandigarh (845/1,000), Haryana (820/1,000), Gujarat (878/1,000), Maharashtra (917/1,000) and Orissa (950/1,000), fail to check the free fall of the female to male population. Not many parents of girls in the Gujjar community are willing to give their daughters in marriage to Gujjar males owing to various reasons.

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