Breaking down the question

The term Sex Ratio asks for a short, precise note that defines the measure, describes the Indian pattern and, most importantly, explains it sociologically. At ten marks the examiner wants a demographic concept read through the lens of gender, culture and social structure, not a bare recital of census figures.

The core of a strong answer is the why — why India shows a persistently adverse ratio, and why the child sex ratio has declined even as the overall ratio improved. This turns a demographic indicator into a window on patriarchy.

Threads to develop:

  • Defining sex ratio and child sex ratio, with the Indian picture.
  • The social and cultural causes of the adverse ratio.
  • What the ratio reveals about the status of women — the theme of missing women.

How to approach it

Open with a clean definition — the number of females per thousand males — and note the distinct, more alarming child sex ratio. Then move to explanation, which should occupy the heart of the answer: son preference, daughter aversion, dowry and the misuse of sex-selective technology.

Draw on the note on the components of population growth for the demographic context. Invoke Amartya Sen's missing women to frame the ratio as a measure of gender injustice, and close with the policy response.

Model answer

The sex ratio is the number of females per thousand males in a population, a basic demographic measure that also serves as a sensitive index of the social standing of women. India has long recorded an adverse sex ratio — fewer women than the biological norm would predict — and the figure has hovered below equality across successive censuses, standing at 943 women per 1000 men in 2011.

More alarming is the child sex ratio, the number of girls per thousand boys in the age group 0 to 6. This has declined over recent decades even as the overall ratio marginally improved, falling to 919 in 2011. Because it is largely free of the effects of migration and differential adult mortality, the falling child sex ratio points directly to sex-selective practices before and soon after birth.

The causes are cultural and structural rather than natural. Son preference runs deep — sons are valued for continuing the lineage, performing rites, supporting parents in old age and inheriting property, while daughters are seen through the idiom of dowry and paraya dhan, a burden to be married away. This daughter aversion, sharpened by the spread of ultrasound technology, has enabled sex-selective abortion, so that a modernising, prosperising India has in places recorded worsening ratios — prosperity and small-family norms combining with patriarchy to eliminate daughters. Female neglect in nutrition and health care adds to excess female mortality in childhood.

The adverse ratio is therefore a demographic expression of patriarchy. Amartya Sen captured its human scale in the idea of missing women — the millions absent from the population who would have survived under conditions of equal treatment. The distorted ratio also generates its own harms, from a shortage of brides and the trafficking of women to heightened insecurity.

Responses have combined prohibition of prenatal sex determination with schemes to raise the value of the girl child, such as conditional cash transfers and awareness campaigns. Yet the persistence of the problem shows that the sex ratio will improve decisively only when the underlying devaluation of women is reversed.

Examiner's perspective

Examiners reward the candidate who reads the sex ratio as a social fact, not a mere statistic — one who explains the adverse figure through son preference, dowry and sex-selective technology rather than simply reporting numbers. Distinguishing the overall ratio from the more revealing child sex ratio is a mark of demographic literacy.

Deploying Amartya Sen's missing women frames the issue as one of gender injustice and lifts the answer above description. Noting the paradox that prosperity and modern technology can worsen the ratio shows analytical depth, and a conclusion linking improvement to the status of women rounds off a confident ten-mark note.