Sex Determination Tests in India

either evenly-balanced sex ratios or sex ratios in favour of females, as in states like Kerala and Manipur. In the Northwest sex ratios have been far more imbalanced against females among specific land-owning communities (such as Rajputs, Jats, Gujjars) and relatively more balanced among almost all have shifted to a deficit of females and are slowly moving towards the all-India pattern. Lower status groups, which not too long ago had favourable sex ratios, are beginning to emulate higher status groups in rural areas, and are recording a decline in the proportion of their respective female populations. Thus the culture of overvaluing male lives at the cost of female lives is not a mere hangover of traditional norms, as is often believed, but is also a widespread contemporary phenomenon.