The District with Twenty-Two Ultrasound Clinics
In a district in Marathwada, the child sex ratio (0-6 years) fell from 940 girls per 1,000 boys in 2001 to 870 in 2011. The district has 22 registered ultrasound clinics; a health worker's records show that of 300 pregnancies in four villages, 60 ended in 'miscarriage' after the family visited a clinic in the district town. The clinics advertise 'family balancing'. Families say a daughter means dowry and no old-age support; one father says, 'We are not poor, we can afford the test.' The PCPNDT Act is in force and one clinic has been sealed. A local newspaper calls it a 'backward village problem'.
1. Evaluate the newspaper's explanation using sociological concepts.
Read the worked answer
The 'backward village problem' framing is empirically and sociologically weak. The father's statement 'we can afford the test' is the key: sex-selective practice follows access to technology and money, not poverty or illiteracy alone. Son preference is structural - patrilineal inheritance, the family name, dowry, and the belief that sons provide old-age security - and these operate in rich and poor households, in cities as well as villages. The district's 22 clinics and the 'family balancing' advertising show a commercial market responding to that preference. The fall from 940 to 870 is not a village failing but a gender system using a new technology. Calling it backwardness blames families and hides the clinics, advertisers and kin networks that reward sons. It also predicts the wrong remedy: more awareness for villagers, rather than enforcement against providers and change in inheritance and marriage practices.
2. Which intervention level - legal, social or economic - would you prioritise, and why?
Read the worked answer
Prioritise legal enforcement plus economic and social measures in combination, because each addresses a different link.
- Legal: the PCPNDT Act targets the provider and the technology; without enforcement the market simply moves. One sealed clinic is a start, but all 22 registered clinics need audit and unregistered ones need detection.
- Social: son preference is learned in families and reinforced by marriage and inheritance. Girls' education, female teachers and media role models shift the reference group; Kerala's higher child sex ratio is associated with female literacy and matrilineal practices, not with more policing.
- Economic: old-age pensions, property and inheritance rights for daughters, and dowry enforcement reduce the perceived return on sons. Law alone fails because the preference survives when the test is hidden; social campaigns alone fail while clinics profit. The realistic priority is enforcement now and structural change over a decade, with the child sex ratio monitored as the outcome measure.
3. Design a small study to test whether dowry is the main cause of son preference.
Read the worked answer
A small study can test the dowry hypothesis without claiming proof. Design: compare 40 families with a recent daughter and 40 with a recent son in the same district, matched roughly on income and education. Measure (i) whether dowry was given or promised at marriage; (ii) expected dowry for a future daughter; (iii) stated old-age support expectations; (iv) who inherits property. Use indirect questions ('In your community, what is usual?') because dowry is illegal and direct admission is unlikely. Add 10 semi-structured interviews with mothers and grandmothers to capture meanings. The hypothesis predicts that families expecting higher dowry and lower old-age support from daughters will show stronger son preference. A correlation would support, not prove, the claim; the study cannot rule out inheritance and family-name norms. The report should present dowry as one mechanism among several and state its sampling limits.