Bengal records highest sex ratio in 110 years
~~Saibal Sen
Kolkata: Nov 4, 2013: First the good news. Bengal's sex ratio - 949.9682 - is at its highest since 1901, when it was 945. Now, the bad one. The state's women are still getting married very early - at 20.3 years - which is the least mean age for effective marriage of women in the country. The national average is 21.2 years.
The data isn't surprising, for Bengal still ranks fourth in child marriages nation-wide, with 54.7 % marriages involving a child bride. The 15th edition of the report 'Women and Men in India' published last month by the ministry of statistics and programme implementation's Central Statistics Office (CSO) lays bare some troubling facts for Bengal's women.
The case in point is the state's infant mortality rate from 2005 to 2011. Over the last decades, the infant mortality rate (IMR) has dropped sharply from 51 in 2001 to 32 in 2011, but a decade back, fewer female children died. In 2011, however, if 34 female children had died per 1,000, for male children it was 30. But, this is also a pan-India trend and Bengal's IMR rates are also much low compared to the IMR rate of 44 recorded nationally.
For Bengal, however, the IMR rates were lower the year before in 2010, at 31 per 1,000 children. On the positive side, Bengal's girl child population (0-6 years) is higher than the national figure. Bengal's 5,171,070 girl children comprise 48.86913% of its 0-6 population which now stands at over 10 million. The comparative national figures are 47.87%.
A reason perhaps lies in another curious set of data. The percentage of women who want sons instead of daughters (16.5%) is almost the same as men who prefer sons to daughters (16.6%). In India, this picture is vastly different, with 2.4% more women wanting a male child than men themselves. Among the major states, the highest overall IMR of 59 was observed in Madhya Pradesh and the lowest of 12 in Kerala in 2011.
Maternal mortality rates have been largely arrested in the 2006-07 and 2007-09 survey years, at sub-150 levels per 1,000 deaths. Among the states, it was highest in Assam (390) followed by Uttar Pradesh (359) and Rajasthan (318). Anemia in women in Bengal has seemingly reached endemic proportions. As much as 63.2 % of the Bengal's 4.4 million women population is suffering from it with 45.8% suffering from mild anemia, 16.4% suffering from moderate anemia and 1% suffering from severe anemia. In all these indexes, Bengal is much higher than the national averages.
Another key index - the worker population ratio - shows women in rural Bengal have to do a lot more to match their male counterparts who too earn a livelihood. For every 58.6 males working in rural Bengal, there are only 18.9 women. This is worse than the national rural ratio, which pegs the female worker ratio at a much higher figure of 24.8.
Urban Bengal isn't any better with a male-female worker ratio of 60.2 (males) and 17.4 (females). The only saving grace is that the latter data is much better than the national figures. Among the states/union territories, worker population ratio for females in the rural sector was the highest in Himachal Pradesh at 52.4% and in the urban sector; it was the highest in Sikkim at 27.3%.
This is just the facade. To dwell deeper, one has to consider the women person days generated under MGNREGA in Bengal. Across India, this scheme is empowering more women to earn their livelihood. Take for example this fiscal 2012-13. Till now, 22,664.92 lakh mandays have been generated, in which the share of women was a whopping 11667.13 lakh or 51.5 %. In Bengal, the story is completely reverse. Since 2009-10, the women's share in the MGNREGA persondays generated has hovered around the 32-33%. The highest is this year's (till now) at 33.7%.
To make matters worse, rural women in Bengal are also being paid less by their employers. The average wage or salary received by women employees (from 15-59 years) is only Rs 119.76 per day whereas the national average is nearly its double, at Rs 201.56 per day. This chasm isn't evident for urban women though. They earn thrice what their rural counterparts earn - Rs 323.56 per day.
Bengal's present sex ratio is the highest in 110 years. In 1901, the sex ration was 945, it dropped to an abysmal 852 in 1941. It has been increasing steadily till it reached 949.97 in 2011 census.
(Source: The 15th edition of Women and Men in India)
