
‘No girls born’ for past three months in area of India covering 132 villages - rfreytag
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/no-girls-born-india-villages-female-foeticide-sex-selective-abortions-a9015541.html
======
hackathonguy
The article doesn't indicate how the villages were sampled.

Suppose a village has a birth rate of 8 babies a year (2 babies every 3
months). There's (roughly) a 50% chance the babies will be male and female,
25% chance that they're both female and 25% chance that they're both male.

That means that if you're sampling from a district that has 1,000 villages
(with the average birth rate of 2 babies / 3 months, roughly the birth rate
indicated by the article), one quarter of the villages will have 2 male babies
- that's 250 villages with 0 female babies born in the last 3 months.

Not making any claims regarding foeticide in India - just saying that the way
they chose the villages matters a lot.

~~~
cldellow
[https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/dehradun/in-3-month...](https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/dehradun/in-3-months-
no-girls-were-born-in-132-ukashi-villages/articleshow/70283468.cms) has a bit
more info.

You can find the census for Uttarkashi district at
[https://cdn.s3waas.gov.in/s3ef575e8837d065a1683c022d2077d342...](https://cdn.s3waas.gov.in/s3ef575e8837d065a1683c022d2077d342/uploads/2018/03/2018031241.pdf)

Page 12 says there are 694 villages and 330,086 people in the district.

~~~
hackathonguy
Ah! That sort of proves the point, doesn't it? 25% of 694 is 173, which is
even higher than 132 villages where there were no female babies. That means
there are actually more female babies than you'd predict in advance. Or is my
math wrong somehow?

------
nuwandavek
Wow! I just released a data story on Indian population with a section on "Case
of the missing women"[0]. This has profound effects on a society like India,
even 2-3 decades later!

[0]
[https://numbersofindia.github.io/stories/population-06-2019/...](https://numbersofindia.github.io/stories/population-06-2019/#ckpt2)

~~~
SJetKaran
Nice work! I created a couple of charts illustrating similar ideas before
([https://sainathadapa.github.io/blog/population-
pyramids/](https://sainathadapa.github.io/blog/population-pyramids/)). Minor
request for change: In the graphs for population, density and fertility rate,
you are showing the district boundaries, but it seems the underlying data you
are using is for states isn't it? Why then show the boundaries of individual
districts?

------
JohnBooty
I can only imagine that there are a number of secondary effects of creating a
skewed male/female ratio.

Simply put, there are not enough women to go around.

I suspect this leads to lots of overly fierce competition for women. Women
treated more as precious commodities and less as human beings. Men lacking
experience dealing with women. A certain percentage of men being unhappy much
of the time because finding a mate is frustrating, or they've simply given up
on it.

This is only conjecture but it's hard to imagine it being otherwise.

~~~
novok
Looking at China, I think it's the opposite actually? By being the rare
commodity, you get to dictate terms and be picky with a lot to choose from.

~~~
Nasrudith
It is probably both really as it varies by agency of the women. Horribly if
they can't say no (trafficed) then they can't be picky and the increased
demand leverage goes not to them but their traffickers. Economics and literal
slavery starts horrifying and only gets worse.

------
distant_hat
Its a clickbait headline. Not saying that there isn't an issue with female
foeticide in India but this study isn't it.

There are nearly 700 villages in the district, and most of them are small
enough to have <2 births in the given time frame.

Out of all those villages they just picked the ones which happened to have had
no females. It is no coincidence, whoever did the study clearly knew what they
were doing and cherry picked the data to sensationalize. You could do the same
to any other similar sized district and get the same results.

~~~
simonh
Have you read the study? Are you qualified to evaluate the statistical
methodology and have you done such an analysis? If so fine, but otherwise
neither you nor I are qualified to make a statement like that.

There does seem to be something going on. According to Wikipedia only 43% of
the population of the region are female.

If 63 million women are statistically missing from the Indian population, I
think it's pretty clear possible outliers like this need investigating, not
denigrating.

~~~
vinceguidry
Anybody can and should feel free to offer their analysis regardless of their
level of qualification. Otherwise we all just sit around waiting for the
experts to chime in. And if it's wrong enough, it will prompt one to correct
it.

~~~
simonh
My point is it's not analysis. It's a completely unsubstantiated assertion of
fact based on what's actually a wild guess.

The info in the article isn't a study, it barely even summarises a study, and
I'm willing to go out on a limb and say the commenter hasn't read the actual
study. If so saying "this study isn't it" isn't simply an opinion, it's
misrepresentation.

~~~
vinceguidry
You're more than entitled to your opinion. You're not entitled to tell someone
to shut up because of it.

~~~
simonh
I'm not telling anyone to shut up. i'm perfectly willing to read any reasoned
counter-point to the article. I'm also completely willing to accept the
information in the article, by itself, isn't clear evidence of anything.

However it quotes local officials who did do the study and have the detailed
analysis saying there's a serious problem that warrants further investigation.
They may be right or they may be wrong. Saying on the basis of what's here
that the study is definitively bad or good isn't warranted though. That's all
I'm saying.

------
sametmax
India is building more and more tensions, and it's really worrying me.

They have 1.3 billions of people, living under an unbelievable social pressure
(casts, diversity, religion, money...), on a land saturated by pollution with
less and less water to drink.

Reading this article, it seems possible they are running toward a gender
crisis as well. Sex frustration is already a terrible thing there, and a big
source of trouble. If this proves right, I don't see a way for it to end well.

Now add on top of that they have very unstable borders and the nuclear weapon,
and we got all the ingredients for something bad to happen.

~~~
magduf
Well, assuming they don't get into a nuclear war, it sounds like things might
work themselves out after a generation or two if they keep going like this. As
you point out, they have a huge number of people; well, if they don't have
many girls, after a couple of generations they're not going to have many
children and the population will shrink drastically.

~~~
sametmax
I bet on thirsty enraged desperate people not keeping their pain to themself.

------
ankit219
This one might be a bureaucratic issue/miscalculation more than anything else.
Even in the dark days when female foeticide was prevalent, it never happened
at the same level. If the reporting is correct, and there is a high
probability it is not given the propensity of Indian media to report news
based on sensationality rather than facts, the findings would be really
shocking.

------
dijit
That's alarming, I wonder how these kinds of things skew global population.

If we assume girls are not preferred in the two most populous countries in the
world (China, India) and their societies have a lower ratio of females to
males, then the global trend of 1:1.08 female to male ratio must be skewed in
a similar way somewhere else? right? Or does this account for that?

In other news, I thought we were headed for a different problem[0].

[0]: [http://theconversation.com/the-y-chromosome-is-
disappearing-...](http://theconversation.com/the-y-chromosome-is-disappearing-
so-what-will-happen-to-men-90125)

~~~
swebs
>the global trend of 1:1.08 female to male ratio must be skewed in a similar
way somewhere else?

It's skewed everywhere simply by the fact that women live to be older. When
looking at people under 30, the male skew is even worse. Here's a population
pyramid for example

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India#/media/File:Indien_Bev%C...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India#/media/File:Indien_Bev%C3%B6lkerungspyramide.png)

------
sbmthakur
Female foetecide has been a big problem in India and it's being tackled by the
Government as well as the Civil society. However, this particular story has a
lot of inconsistency and doesn't provide a true picture. The problems with it
are being actively discussed here:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/IndiaSpeaks/comments/cgvumc/we_need...](https://www.reddit.com/r/IndiaSpeaks/comments/cgvumc/we_need_to_talk_about_how_easy_it_is_to_make_up_a/)

------
ptah
what has the consequences been historically speaking?

~~~
Nasrudith
Generally internal instability from internal competition by discontent men,
attempts to retain power by trying to "burn off" excess discontent fighting
aged men with wars against some sort of external threat/scapegoat, or flat out
exogamous raids to seize women - that has been an ancient dubious tradition
since at least the bronze age.

How applicable it will be in the modern context is another story as ancients
didn't have the degree of interconnectedness, offense/defense asymmetry of
weapon superiority, or the "play nice or else" of Pax Atomica which has kept
Pakistan and India shockingly civil even with terrorist attacks, border
skirmishes, and similiar incidents.

------
modi15
Cherry picked data. Sensationalist headlines. Top of HN.

There are a lot of things horrible about christian missionaries but their
internet propaganda division is killing it.

~~~
dang
Ok, but please don't post flamebait comments to HN and certainly not religious
flamewar.

If you think a story is bad for the site, the thing to do is flag it, not post
comments that only make things worse. This is in the site guidelines:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).
Would you mind reviewing them?

Edit: you've posted nationalistic flamebait in the past too, unfortunately. We
ban accounts that do that, so please don't.

~~~
modi15
Apologies.

I didnt intend for religious flamewar. It is my position that these news are
sponsored by christian missionaries. I thought reporting the same in comments
is the best way to highlight it. How else do you suggest I claim my position ?

Not sure which of my posts constitute nationalistic flamebait. If you could
highlight ill try to steer clear. Thx.

~~~
dang
The way to steer clear of flamebait is to provide factual information and
avoid pejoratives. Your comment upthread was low on information and high on
pejoratives. Flip that ratio and it will help a lot.

------
hycaria
Terrible video autoplay.

------
raverbashing
The quotes are very appropriate unfortunately

It's a sober reminder of the feel good cultural relativism propped up by some

