Economic Survey says India must confront preference for son

Speed Post News Network

New Delhi :The Pink-coloured Economic Survey 2017-18 tabled in Parliament on January 29, 2o18, by Union Finance and Corporate Affairs Minister Arun Jaitley recommends that India must confront the societal preference, even meta-preference for a son while providing an assessment of India’s performance on gender outcomes relative to other economies.

The skewed sex ratio in favour of males led to the identification of “missing” women. But there may be a meta-preference manifesting itself in fertility stopping rules contingent on the sex of the last child, which notionally creates “unwanted” girls, estimated at about 21 million, adds the Survey. Consigning these odious categories to history soon should be society’s objective, opines the Survey.

The Survey takes into account that Gender equality is an inherently multi-dimensional issue. Accordingly, assessments have been made based on three specific dimensions of gender, ie Agency (relates to women’s ability to make decisions on reproduction, spending on themselves, spending on their households and their own mobility and health), Attitude (relates to attitude about violence against women/wives, and the ideal number of daughters preferred relative to the ideal number of sons) and Outcomes (relate to ‘son preference’ measured by sex ratio of last child, female employment, choice of contraception, education level, age at marriage, age at first birth and physical or sexual violence experienced by women) which aim to reflect the status, role and empowerment of women in the society.

The Survey notes that gender outcomes exhibit a convergence pattern, improving with wealth to a greater extent in India than in similar countries so that even where it is lagging, it can expect to catch up over time. The Survey, however, cautions that on several other indicators, notably employment, use of reversible contraception, and son preference, India has some distance to traverse because development has not proved to be an antidote. Economic Survey 2017-18 states that within India, there is significant heterogeneity, with the North-Eastern states (a model for the rest of the country) consistently out-performing others.

The survey acknowledges that the government’s ‘Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao’ and ‘Sukanya Samridhi Yojana’ schemes, and mandatory maternity leave rules are all steps in the right direction. The Survey states that just as India has committed to moving up the ranks in Ease of Doing Business indicators, a similar commitment should be endeavored on the gender front, according to a PIB release.

The colour of this year’s survey cover was chosen as a symbol of support for the growing movement to end violence against women, which spans continents.