The Worli-Prabhadevi region, where traditional chawls gave way to skyscrapers, recorded the highest drop in child sex ratio in a decade. For every 1,000 boys, it had 931 girls in 2001 but just 899 in 2011. The picture remained dismal all around. In south Mumbai's Dongri-Umarkhadi stretch, where considerable redevelopment took place, the ratio fell by 28 points to 907 girls per 1,000 boys.
At the neighbourhood level, the swish Chowpatty went through the biggest shift. It had a ratio of 987 girls to 1,000 boys in 2001, which shrank by a troubling 178 points to 809 girls in 2011. Gorai in the western suburbs and Kurla in the eastern suburbs were the other pockets with ratios lower than 850 girls per 1,000 boys in 2011.
Child sex ratio is the number of girls for every 1,000 boys in the 0-6 age group. A skewed ratio tells of the deficit of girls in a given population. The gender imbalance of the kind visible in Mumbai is usually caused by sex-selective abortions, migration, under-reporting of births of one sex, or differential mortality between the sexes.
"Our work shows there isn't much of differential mortality between girls and boys in Mumbai. Births normally take place in hospitals and are therefore recorded. In the absence of these two factors, sex-selective abortions are usually to blame," said A L Sharada of voluntary organization Population First, which runs the girl child campaign Laadli.
"Mumbai is a city with high visibility of girls. They are seen to be successful in different sectors. It is then worrying that the city is still so patriarchal and reflects a bias against the girl child," noted Sharada.
Sex-selective abortions are illegal under the Pre-conception and Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques Act, 1994, and attract imprisonment of up to three years or a fine up to Rs 10,000. But the law is poorly implemented.
"The municipal corporation is least concerned about the girl child and has no plans for implementation of the law," said lawyer and girl child activist Varsha Deshpande. She pointed out that not more than six cases have been registered under the Act in the past 19 years and only one has resulted in conviction.
Deshpande estimated that Mumbai has over 2,500 sonography machines but no effective mechanism to monitor their misuse. The state government launched an online platform (amchimulgi.in) for lodging complaints against sex-selective practices, but received little response.
P Arokiasamy of the International Institute for Population Sciences said the Census findings are in keeping with national trends. "In most parts of India, sex-selective practices are more common among the more educated and richer families, which have the knowledge and the resources to discreetly carry out the practice."
Activists said the meagre monitoring in recent years has driven several sex-selective abortion clinics underground or forced couples to go overseas. Arokiasamy offered another possible explanation: "In smaller families, even in the absence of sex selection, couples may stop having children after a boy. This could cause an imbalance."
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