Revision summary
DEMARU states combined prosperity with missing girls. Patriliny, dowry, and smaller families raised the premium on sons. Ultrasound converted preference into selection. Law against sex selection is necessary and not enough. Daughter property and a change in kinship honour are the deeper solutions.
Model answer
Copper italics in this answer — like this — are the key facts. Each one is unpacked in the Facts & figures rail.
Introduction
DEMARU named a belt of prosperous states with alarmingly low child sex ratios. The puzzle is that wealth and literacy did not produce daughters. Causes sit in patriliny, dowry, and technology. Solutions must hit incentives and honour, not only clinics.
Body
Causes
- Leela Dube’s Seed and Earth: the son continues the line; the daughter is a field given away.
- Dowry and hypergamy in north-western kinship make a girl a lifetime cost, as Irawati Karve’s northern pattern would predict.
- Green Revolution property and smaller families intensified the need for one successful son, not for more children who might be girls.
- Ultrasound and abortion turned preference into sex selection, a modern tool for an old ideology.
- Agrarian honour, khap-like controls, and women’s weak land titles close alternatives.
Why these states
- Prosperity bought machines. It did not buy gender equality, a disharmonic outcome in Beteille’s sense.
Solutions
- Enforce the sex-selection ban without driving it only underground; watch clinics and advertisements.
- Daughter property rights that actually transfer land, not only paper law.
- Cash schemes help at the margin; they fail if marriage still drains the natal house.
- Public naming of missing girls, school, and women’s work that make a daughter an asset in the parents’ old age.
- Change the kinship maths: without a dent in Seed and Earth, ratios rebound.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD SE[Seed Earth dowry] --> PF[Son preference] US[Ultrasound] --> SS[Sex selection] PF[PF] --> SS[SS] SS --> LR[Low child sex ratio] LD[Land rights for daughters] --> FX[Possible rise]
Conclusion
Low female sex ratios in DEMARU states are caused by patrilineal honour plus cheap sex-selection technology in property-rich regions. Solutions are legal, economic, and cultural together. Prosperity without a change in who counts as the seed will keep daughters missing.
Quick related
Students also ask
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To what extent does nation building depends on strengthening of pluralities in Indian society?
Next question on this syllabus topic (2017 · Q7(b)). View answer →
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Is education enough to raise the ratio?
Educated prosperous districts have been among the worst. Education without property and honour change is weak.
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Do schemes like cash for girls work?
They help survival and schooling. They rarely beat dowry and land ideology alone.
Same topic · past papers
UPSC has asked this before
These previous-year questions sit on the same topic. Open one to practise the earlier ask.
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2017 · Q3(a) · Sociology GS 2 · 20 marks
Indebtedness is one of the serious issues leading to farmers suicides Discuss reasons and suggest solutions
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