Indian state to pay cash to girls to fix sex ratio

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An Indian state government has offered to pay 100,000 rupees ($2,300) cash to families who have just one daughter in a bid to counteract traditional preferences for sons and balance the sex ratio.

The cash incentive will be paid to the daughters when they reach 20 years of age, provided their parents have had only one child and have undertaken birth control operations, officials said on Thursday.

The southern state of Andhra Pradesh has a sex ratio of 943 females to 1,000 males. Sex determination tests and female foeticide are common in small towns and rural areas of the largely farming state.

“I consider it a shame that in our country we ascertain the sex of the baby before it enters the world,” Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y. S. Rajasekhar Reddy said at a function on the empowerment of woman in the state capital, Hyderabad.

In India, where millions of couples still hanker for a male child, the overall sex ratio is 927 females to 1,000 males, down from 945-to-1,000 more than a decade ago. It has one of the lowest female-to-male ratios in the world.

Many couples see the boy as growing up to be a bread-winner and providing for them in their old age, unlike a daughter who will be married off and become part of her husband’s family.

India has banned pre-natal sex testing through an act of parliament but non-government agencies say the law is basically toothless and sex determination tests are common.

The Andhra Pradesh government has also appointed India’s leading woman tennis player Sania Mirza - who is from Andhra Pradesh - as “state ambassador of the girl child” as part of its campaign to protect the female child.

Eighteen-year-old Mirza, the first Indian woman to get into the third round of a Grand Slam, will feature on billboards with the caption: “Your daughter may be the next champion”. 

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