The great disappearing act continues. The girl child is gradually retreating from the Indian landscape. Last week, Unesco’s Global Monitoring Report on Education for All pointed to the country’s dismal progress towards gender parity in schools. It reckons that India is unlikely to meet the goal even by 2015. In contrast, Bangladesh already sends as many girls to primary school as boys, and Nepal is on its way to ensuring gender parity in secondary education by 2005. Gender parity is clearly not a function of a country’s economic development. The failure to ensure girls equitable access to basic services like education points to a deeper crisis in civil society. When it is estimated that two-thirds of Indian children not attending schools are girls, the country’s commitment to equality itself must be questioned.It would be folly to see these school enrollment figures in isolation. They are part of a larger picture outlined by a study presented recently. According to a recent report by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, the girl child herself is endangered. It was found that according to the 2001 census, the sex ratio has fallen steeply in the 0-6 age group. This is especially so in the richer regions of the north like Punjab, Delhi and Haryana. Punjab, for instance, has no district with more than 850 girls for every 1,000 boys. Southwest Delhi, one of the showpieces of the country’s economic progress over the last decade of liberalisation and reform, too has a child sex ratio of less than 850. In fact, from 1991 to 2001, 70 districts countrywide have seen a slide of more than 50 points in the child sex ratio.It is in this context that the Unesco report brings dismal tidings. Reversing this shameful resort to technology to abort foetuses based on their gender involves the empowerment of women. It envisages enough female role models to highlight the perversity of patriarchal notions about the superiority of men. It demands mothers enabled and resolute enough to resist societal pressures to opt for sex determination. Most of all, it requires the promise of equality to Indian girls and women. So when it is predicted that girls have a significantly slimmer chance of making it to school than their male peers, the entire movement for gender justice takes a huge knock.
