Breaking down the question
The question asks why it is necessary to implement the PCPNDT Act — the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques Act — in India. The focus is on justification, not merely description. You must show the social problem the Act addresses and why legislative intervention is required.
Necessary to implement signals that the answer should marshal reasons — demographic, social and ethical — for the law, and note the gap between enactment and effective enforcement. The sociological core is the link between prenatal technology, entrenched son preference and the declining child sex ratio.
How to approach it
Open by identifying the problem — a skewed and declining child sex ratio driven by sex-selective abortion, made possible by the misuse of diagnostic technology. Explain the Act's purpose briefly, then give the reasons it is necessary — demographic, social, gender-justice and ethical. Close by noting the implementation challenge that makes vigorous enforcement essential, drawing on the note on components of population growth.
Model answer
India's child sex ratio — the number of girls per thousand boys in the 0–6 age group — has been declining, falling to 918 in the 2011 Census. This adverse and worsening ratio is the product of widespread sex-selective abortion, made possible when prenatal diagnostic techniques meant to detect genetic abnormalities are misused to determine and then eliminate female foetuses. The PCPNDT Act — the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques Act — prohibits this misuse and the disclosure of the sex of the foetus. Its rigorous implementation is necessary for several reasons.
First, on demographic grounds. A society cannot sustain a healthy population when its sex ratio at birth is artificially distorted. A deficit of women, what Amartya Sen memorably called the missing women of Asia, produces a long-term imbalance that disrupts the natural composition of the population and its reproduction.
Second, on social grounds. A shortage of women generates serious consequences — the trafficking of brides, forced and shared marriages, rising violence against women, and heightened insecurity. Far from raising the value of women, scarcity in a patriarchal order tends to intensify their commodification.
Third, on grounds of gender justice. Female foeticide is the most extreme expression of son preference and patriarchy — the devaluation of the girl child before she is even born. As Mary John and other scholars note, modern technology in the hands of a patriarchal culture becomes a new instrument of an old discrimination. The Act is necessary to check the alliance of technology and prejudice.
Fourth, on ethical and legal grounds. Sex-selective elimination violates the right to life and the principle of equality, and corrupts the medical profession into complicity. A civilised order cannot tolerate the systematic destruction of females as a matter of preference.
Finally, the Act is necessary precisely because it is hard to enforce. Sex determination is clandestine, collusion between families and clinics is common, and convictions have been few. This is why implementation — registration of clinics, regulation of ultrasound machines, monitoring and prosecution — must be strengthened rather than left as words on paper. Law alone cannot change attitudes, but strict implementation alongside education and the empowerment of women is indispensable to reversing the decline. For fuller context, see the note on components of population growth.
Examiner's perspective
Examiners want the answer to explain why the law matters, not merely what it says. The strongest scripts connect the misuse of diagnostic technology to entrenched son preference and the falling child sex ratio, citing the 2011 figure and Sen's missing women to ground the argument in evidence.
Marks rise when candidates set out distinct reasons — demographic, social, gender-justice and ethical — rather than a single undifferentiated point, and when they close by acknowledging the enforcement gap that makes vigorous implementation, not just enactment, essential. A note that law must be paired with changing patriarchal attitudes signals sociological depth.