Breaking down the question

The command word — discuss — asks for a balanced treatment of both the nature of regional variation in India's sex ratio and the reasons behind it. The question therefore has two limbs, and a complete answer must address each: first describe the pattern across regions, then explain it sociologically.

The analytical heart is that sex ratio is not a neutral demographic statistic but a mirror of gender relations. Amartya Sen's idea of missing women frames adverse ratios as evidence of systematic disadvantage, while Barbara Miller's work on the endangered sex traces the sharpest deficits to the north-western belt where son preference and kinship structures converge.

At ten marks the answer must combine an accurate description of the north-south and rural-urban patterns with a layered explanation.

How to approach it

  • Distinguish overall sex ratio from the more sensitive child sex ratio.
  • Sketch the pattern: adverse ratios across the north-west, healthier ratios in the south and the north-east.
  • Explain the reasons — son preference, dowry, patrilineal kinship, agrarian labour, and sex-selective technology.
  • Note counter-tendencies such as female out-migration affecting urban ratios.
  • Conclude that sex ratio is a sociological index of patriarchy, not merely a demographic fact.

Ground the discussion in the emerging population issues note.

Model answer

The sex ratio — the number of females per thousand males — varies markedly across India, and its regional pattern is a sensitive register of gender relations. Two measures matter: the overall sex ratio and the child sex ratio, the latter being harder to distort by migration and therefore a cleaner index of discrimination in early life.

The nature of the variation is well established. The north-western states, notably Punjab, Haryana, and parts of Rajasthan and Gujarat, have long recorded the most adverse ratios, and their child sex ratios have in places fallen sharply. The southern states such as Kerala, and much of the north-east, display healthier and sometimes female-favourable ratios. A rural-urban contrast complicates the picture, since female out-migration for marriage or the in-migration of male workers can skew local urban ratios.

The reasons are layered. The deepest is son preference, rooted in patrilineal and patrilocal kinship where sons carry the lineage, inherit property, and support parents in old age, while daughters are seen as a transient economic burden intensified by dowry. Barbara Miller linked the north-western deficit to a kinship and agrarian order that devalues daughters, contrasting it with the greater autonomy of women in the south and the tribal north-east. Amartya Sen captured the aggregate effect in the concept of missing women, attributing the shortfall to unequal access to nutrition, health care, and, latterly, sex-selective abortion.

A proximate driver is technology: the spread of prenatal diagnostic techniques allowed pre-existing son preference to translate into skewed child sex ratios, prompting legislative bans on sex determination. Southern and north-eastern exceptions are explained by higher female literacy, matrilineal traces, bride-price rather than dowry in some communities, and greater female participation in work.

Regional variation in the sex ratio, then, is best read not as a demographic accident but as a sociological index of patriarchy — a map of where kinship, property, and cultural devaluation of daughters press hardest.

Examiner's perspective

The examiner expects both limbs of the question answered — the descriptive pattern and the causal explanation — and penalises scripts that describe without explaining or explain without locating the pattern regionally. Distinguishing the child sex ratio from the overall ratio signals demographic literacy.

Crediting Sen for missing women and Miller for the north-western kinship argument demonstrates conceptual command, while noting the southern and north-eastern exceptions shows that the answer grasps the underlying social variables rather than reciting a single national figure. The strongest scripts close by reading sex ratio as a measure of gender relations, not a bare statistic.