NEW DELHI - As the
global population hits seven billion, experts are warning that skewed
gender ratios could fuel the emergence of volatile "bachelor nations"
driven by an aggressive competition for brides.
The precise
consequences of what French population expert Christophe Guilmoto calls
the "alarming demographic masculinisation" of countries such as India
and China as the result of sex-selective abortion remain unclear.
But
many demographers believe the resulting shortage of adult women over
the next 50 years will have as deep and pervasive an impact as climate
change.
The statistics behind the warnings are grimly compelling.
Nature
provides an unbending biological standard for the sex ratio at birth of
104-106 males to every 100 females. Any significant divergence from
that narrow range can only be explained by abnormal factors.
In
India and Vietnam the figure is around 112 boys for every 100 girls. In
China it is almost 120 to 100 -- and in some places higher than 130.
And
the trend is spreading: to regions like the South Caucasus, where
Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia all post birth ratios of more than 115
to 100, and further west to Serbia and Bosnia.
Global awareness
of the problem was raised back in 1990 with an article by the Nobel
prize-winning Indian economist Amartya Sen that carried the now famous
title: "More Than 100 Million Women Are Missing."
Demographers
say that figure is now more than 160 million -- women selected out of
existence by the convergence of traditional preferences for sons,
declining fertility and, most crucially, the prevalence of cheap
prenatal sex-determination technology.
As many as half a million
female foetuses are estimated to be aborted each year in India,
according to a study by British medical journal The Lancet.
"Earlier
villagers had to go to the city to get a sonogram (ultrasound)," said
Poonam Muttreja, executive director of the non-profit Population
Foundation of India. "Today sonographers are going into the villages to
cater to people who want sons."
Even if the sex ratio at birth
returned to normal in India and China within 10 years, Guilmoto says men
in both countries would still face a "marriage squeeze" for decades to
come.
"Not only would these men have to marry significantly
older, but this growing marriage imbalance would also lead to a rapid
rise in male bachelorhood... an important change in countries where
almost everyone used to get married," he said.
How that change might manifest itself is hotly debated, although nearly everyone agrees there is no foreseeable upside.
Some
forecast an increase in polyandry and sex tourism, while others predict
cataclysmic scenarios with the rise of male-surplus societies where
sexual predation, violence and conflict are the norm.
A
particularly alarmist note was sounded several years ago by political
scientists Valerie Hudson and Andrea den Boer, who wrote that Asian
countries with too many men posed a security threat to the West.
"High-sex-ratio
societies are governable only by authoritarian regimes capable of
suppressing violence at home and exporting it abroad through
colonisation or war," they said.
Mara Hvistendahl, a
correspondent for Science magazine and author of the recently published
"Unnatural Selection", says fears of full-scale wars are unfounded, and
points out that India remains a thriving democracy, despite its
shockingly high gender imbalance.
However she does agree with the underlying premise.
"Historically, societies in which men substantially outnumber women are not nice places to live," Hvistendahl stressed.
"Often
they are unstable. Sometimes they are violent," she said, adding that
leaders in both China and India have spoken of the threat gender
imbalance poses to social stability.
UN agencies have issued
similar warnings about the correlation between a scarcity of women and
increases in sex trafficking and marriage migration, albeit with certain
caveats.
"The data is really limited," said Nobuko Horibe,
Asia-Pacific director of the UN Population Fund. "It is very likely that
this marriage squeeze would lead to these phenomena... but it's very
anecdotal at this stage."
But while more and more red flags are
being raised over the long-term implication of skewed sex ratios, few
solutions are being offered.
Sex-selective abortion is illegal in both China and India, but officials say the law is incredibly difficult to enforce.
There
is "no silver bullet", admits Guilmoto, who believes the first priority
is to make sure the problem is properly publicised -- and not just in
the developing world.
"In some countries in eastern Europe, people are absolutely not aware of what is going on," he warned.
- AFP /ls
As if any one in same mind would want a daughter,lol