Sex Ratio and Violence-Spurious Results

Sex Ratio and Violence Spurious Results Arup Mitra THE grand debate on gender ratio in the Indian context gains momentum further as Philip Oldenburg (1992) in his recent piece attaches a new dimension to the issue. To explain the Bermuda Triangle for Girls' of west-central UP and the surrounding 'downward sloping' districts he proposes to include the factor, namely, the "perception of a need for sons to uphold, with violence, a family's power vis-a-vis neighbours". In favour of his basic hypothesis (i e, "families in west-central UP want (or need) more sons than families elsewhere because additional sons enhance their capacity literally to defend themselves or to exercise their power"), the empirical evidence he cites is the negative correlation (-0.72) between the district specific sex ratio and the rale of murders. But such a correlation between the variables mentioned above can also emerge if the districts with low murder rates, and thus less disputes and violence as the author would have us believe, report outmigration of males larger than that in the districts with high-murder rates. The outmigration of males in the districts with less violence would turn the sex ratio in favour of the women. But such a possibility has been ruled out in Oldenburg's discussion as he writes, "it seems unlikely that even if all east UP migrants were to return home, the sex ratio would decline to the level of west-central UP". But if women for reasons such as marriage have outmigrated to a greater extent from the central-west UP as compared to elsewhere in the state, that can also be a reason of low sex-ratio in central-west UP.