Infanticide of Baby Girls in India
In the late 1980s, Salem district in Tamil Nadu was estimated to have lost more than 6,000 newborn girls in two years. In 2019, a government audit in Uttarakhand’s Uttarkashi district found 132 villages where no girl had been born in three months. Three decades apart, the headline barely changes. The killing of newborn girls in India has been falling for years without ever fully ending. This piece looks at where the practice stands now, why it has been so hard to root out, and where the most useful work is still being done. What is the scale of newborn girl killings in India today? The honest answer is that nobody knows exactly. Most killings happen at home, are recorded as natural deaths, and never enter official data. What we can measure is the gap they leave behind. India’s child sex ratio fell from 945 girls per 1,000 boys in 1991 to 919 by the 2011 census. The 2019 to 2021 National Family Health Survey reported the overall sex ratio climbing back to 1,020 women per 1,000 men, but the sex ratio at birth, which is the cleaner signal, sat at 929. Biology produces roughly 952. The gap is what demographers call “missing girls” and what The Lancet, in a 2011 study, estimated at around 12 million female fetuses aborted over three decades. Pure post-birth infanticide is harder to count. State crime records picked up only 25 cases in one developed Indian state last year and 11 in another, almost certainly a fraction of the real number. The pattern documented by midwives in Bihar over the past three decades, where infants were smothered with wet cloths, fed dry rice, or strangled with an umbilical cord, has shifted partly toward abandonment. Fewer babies are killed directly. More are left in fields, by railway tracks, or at the gates of shelters. Why does son preference still drive parents to harm baby girls? The standard answer is dowry. That is right, but incomplete. Dowry is the most visible cost, often running between 5 and 10 lakh rupees for working-class families and many times more for the middle class. A son in many parts of India is also still expected to inherit land, support parents in old age, light their funeral pyre, and continue the family name. A daughter, by traditional logic, leaves at marriage and takes value with her. What makes this harder to shift is that the logic is partially self-fulfilling. When daughters are systematically less educated and less likely to inherit, they do become more economically vulnerable than sons. That outcome then feeds the next generation’s preference. The Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques Act of 1994 made sex-determination illegal, but families with access to private clinics still find ways. A 1984 Bombay study found 7,999 of 8,000 sex-selective abortions involved female fetuses. The ratio in unregulated clinics has changed less than people assume. How is female foeticide different from infanticide, and why does the line keep blurring? The difference is timing. Foeticide is the sex-selective abortion of a female fetus before birth. Infanticide is the killing of a newborn girl after birth. The motive is the same. The method differs only in when it happens. For decades, foeticide was the option used by wealthier families who could afford ultrasound and a willing radiologist. Infanticide was the option used by poorer families with no access to either. As ultrasound machines have grown cheaper, foeticide has spread down the income ladder, and post-birth infanticide has fallen. The PCPNDT Act, when enforced, makes foeticide harder. When it is not enforced, the act simply pushes the practice underground. Both leave the same statistical fingerprint: an absent girl. Which Indian states have made progress, and which have gone backwards? The picture is more mixed than the national average suggests. State Sex Ratio at Birth (NFHS-5, 2019-21) Trend Punjab 904 Improving from 836 in 2001 Haryana 893 Improving from 819, still among the lowest Tamil Nadu 878 Worsening recently after long gains Uttarakhand 844 One of the steepest declines Kerala 951 Stable, near biological norm Bihar 908 Slowly improving Punjab and Haryana, long the worst offenders, have improved meaningfully but remain well below biological norms. Tamil Nadu, which pioneered the Cradle Baby Scheme, has moved in the wrong direction in some districts in the past five years. Uttarakhand’s 2019 surveillance episode in 132 villages was a warning signal that the problem is not confined to the north Indian Hindi belt. Who is doing the work on the ground that government schemes cannot? Government schemes like Beti Bachao Beti Padhao, launched in 2015, are necessary but limited. A government audit found more than half of BBBP’s budget had been spent on advertising and publicity rather than direct intervention. Some of that reach has value. Most of it has not translated into a measurable change in any district level CSR. The work that does translate tends to be done by groups closer to the ground. ASHA workers tracking pregnancies village by village. NGOs operating cradle reception points where a mother can surrender a baby anonymously instead of harming her. Shelters that take in abandoned infants, treat the medical issues that come with neglected newborns, and either place them for adoption or care for them long-term. A non-profit like Prabh Aasra in Punjab runs exactly this kind of cradle, often absorbing cases that fall through the cracks of the state apparatus, including infants with serious medical needs no government home is set up for. The trade-off is honest. The state can fund and scale. NGOs can act fast and stay with a child for years. Neither replaces the other. What can an ordinary citizen actually do when they suspect a girl is at risk? This is the question almost nothing else on the topic answers clearly. If you believe a newborn or pregnant woman is at immediate risk, the first call is Childline 1098, India’s national child helpline. The call is free, available 24 hours, and routes to the