As India’s middle class grows, more families are using modern technology to ensure they have a boy, according to gender and population experts. Confronted with a decrease in the number of girls born, the state of Maharashtra has decided to crack down on the illegal practice of female feticide. India outlawed the practice of doctors using technologies like ultrasounds to tell patients the sex of their unborn child in 1994. Abortion based on certain grounds is legal, but having one based on sex is not. The home minister of Maharashtra, R.R. Patil, warned that female foeticide and the resulting skewed sex ratio could turn into a “social disaster” and called combating this crime a top priority. In Maharashtra, the sex ratio drops to 884 girls per 1,000 boys, according to the 2006-2008 data. “The doctors who are a part of this shameful act should be punished and the medical council should cancel their licence to practise medicine for the rest of their life,” he wrote on his blog.
The state government has since announced a proposal to encourage families to have girls by providing cash incentives. On the birth of a girl child, 5,000 rupees ($114) will be deposited into a bank account under her name, according to local media reports. Once the family ensures the girl completes her schooling and does not marry before the age of 18, she will have access to the money.