Child sex ratio declining in Telangana: Survey

The child sex ratio (CSR) has been drastically declining in Telangana for the last 10 years.

According to a survey conducted by the ActionAid India, an anti-poverty agency working across the country for over four decades for alleviation of poverty and campaigning on the declining child sex ratio (CSR), the CSR in Warangal fell from 955 to 912 per 1,000 boys in 2011, the lowest in the state. In Nalgonda, it came down to 921 from 952, in Adilabad to 942 from 962, in Karimnagar to 937 from 962 and in Kadapa to 919 from 951.

Female foeticide is common in all communities and castes in the state and this disturbing trend has started more than two decades after the advent of the scanning technology in rural areas, according to representatives of the agency.

CAMPAIGN: ActionAid India will launch a statewide campaign on the declining sex ratio at Haryana Bhavan, Paradise in  Secunderabad on Monday. The campaign will be launched by minister for women and child welfare Sunitha Laxma Reddy.

Addressing a press conference here on Sunday after releasing a poster on protection of the girl child, ActionAid members P Raghu, Rukmini Rao, N Indrani Nani and others said the organisation, with the help of SHGs, would take up awareness campaigns across the state on the need to protect the girl child.

The declining ratio would result in demographic imbalance and adverse social consequences and there was a need to avoid this catastrophe, they said. They will also demand the government to keep a strict vigil  against scanning centres conducting sex determination tests.