How Indian Society and Policy Have Evolved to Combat Female Feticide and Infanticide

Every year, millions of girls are selectively aborted or killed at birth in India – not because of poverty alone, not because of ignorance, and not confined to any single region, caste, or class. The elimination of female children is a practice with deep historical roots, one that colonial rulers tried to legislate away in the 19th century, that post-independence India criminalized through landmark laws, and that persists today in both rural villages and affluent urban households. Understanding how Indian society arrived here – and what has changed – requires tracing three interconnected threads: the policy timeline from British rule to the present, the geography and sociology of who practices it and why, and the cultural logic that laws alone have failed to dismantle.

From the colonial encounter to independence: a policy history 🔗

The British first formally documented female infanticide in India in 1789, when a magistrate stationed in the North-Western Provinces reported that among certain Rajput clans, no daughter had been raised for generations. British colonial records show the practice was most concentrated in north-western regions, particularly among dominant landowning castes, though it was not universal across communities. Colonial administrators were initially reluctant to intervene – they depended on high-caste local elites to collect taxes and maintain order, and female infanticide implicated those very elites.

This reluctance shifted by the 1830s, and in 1870 the British passed the Female Infanticide Prevention Act, making the practice illegal in Punjab and the North-Western Provinces. The law threatened perpetrators with death or transportation for life. Yet the Act had a serious structural flaw: once administrators believed they had solved the problem legislatively, they stopped looking for it. In reality, the practice continued – now simply hidden rather than openly acknowledged. What the colonial state had effectively done was turn female infanticide into what historian Bernard Cohn described as a “statistical crime” – one that showed up in skewed sex ratios rather than in prosecutions.

There is another dimension to the colonial role that goes beyond legislation. Research by Mara Hvistendahl found a direct correlation between the taxation policies of the British East India Company and the rise in female infanticide cases. Higher taxes made it increasingly difficult for wealthy families to afford dowries without losing land, intensifying the economic calculus that made daughters a perceived financial liability. Colonial rule, in this sense, did not simply confront an existing evil – it actively deepened some of the economic pressures that drove it.

After independence in 1947, India inherited both the practice and the unresolved social dynamics behind it. The post-colonial state was armed with a progressive constitution that guaranteed gender equality, but equality on paper did not translate into equality in practice. What changed by the 1970s and 1980s was technology. The widespread availability of amniocentesis and then ultrasound imaging gave families a new tool: the ability to determine fetal sex before birth. Female feticide in post-colonial India evolved directly from the customary female infanticide of earlier periods, now carried out with medical instruments rather than poison or suffocation – and with a veneer of clinical distance that made it easier to rationalize.

Legislation in the modern era: the PCPNDT Act and its limits 🔗

By the early 1990s, fetal sex determination had become rampant enough that the Indian government was forced to act. Foetal sex determination and sex-selective abortion had grown into a business worth an estimated ₹1,000 crore (approximately US$244 million). In 1994, Parliament passed the Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PNDT) Act, which banned prenatal sex determination. It was amended in 2003 and renamed the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PCPNDT) Act, extending its scope to cover pre-conception sex selection methods as well. The amended law required all ultrasound clinics and genetic laboratories to be registered, mandated detailed record-keeping, and stiffened penalties for violators.

Despite the law, sex ratios remained adverse and in some states even worsened in the two decades following the PCPNDT Act’s enactment. The failure has been attributed to multiple factors: widespread willingness among medical professionals to violate the Act for payment, insufficient inspections of diagnostic centres, and a judicial system slow to prosecute. Fresh crackdowns in states like Karnataka, Haryana, Gujarat, and Delhi have exposed cross-border sex-determination rackets – covert networks linking agents, clinics, and pharmacies – that route clients across district and state borders to evade oversight. As of 2021-23, India’s sex ratio at birth stood at 917 females per 1,000 males according to Sample Registration System data, still significantly below the natural ratio of 950-980.

Government initiatives like Beti Bachao Beti Padhao (Save the Daughter, Educate the Daughter), launched in 2015, have added an awareness and behavioral-change dimension to what had previously been a purely enforcement-based approach. Stricter enforcement combined with programs like Beti Bachao Beti Padhao has contributed to measurable improvements in sex ratios in some states, though progress remains uneven. Punjab, for example, saw its child sex ratio improve by 48 points in one census period – but as of 2024, its overall sex ratio at birth still sits at 918 females per 1,000 males, below the national average.

Regional and class variations: not a uniform crisis 🔗

One of the most important – and often misunderstood – aspects of female feticide and infanticide in India is how unevenly it is distributed. The assumption that it is a problem of poverty, low education, or rural backwardness is repeatedly contradicted by data.

The north-south divide 🔗

States like Haryana, Punjab, and Rajasthan exhibit severely skewed sex ratios due to strong male child preference and patriarchal norms, while southern states like Kerala have maintained comparatively balanced ratios. Punjab and Haryana have historically recorded some of the highest child sex ratios, with Punjab reaching 126.1 and Haryana 122.0 males per 100 females at their worst points. In contrast, Kerala, with high female literacy and a distinct cultural tradition of matrilineal property holding in certain communities, has long stood as an outlier with near-natural sex ratios.

The north-south divide in part reflects differences in how marriage markets are structured. Research presented at Yale’s MacMillan Center by Cambridge economist Kaivan Munshi shows that sex selection is largely driven by the structure of the caste-based marriage market. In South India, where close-kin marriages were historically common, there was little incentive to eliminate daughters because girls were exchanged reciprocally between family groups. When economic development after the 1980s eroded this system and opened a broader marriage market – one where dowries became the norm – sex selection began rising in the south as well, nearly catching up with northern rates. This finding is significant: it shifts the explanation away from culture alone toward the economics of marriage and family formation.

Caste, class, and the affluent paradox 🔗

Female feticide is widely assumed to be a problem concentrated among poorer, less-educated families. The data consistently refutes this. The Indian census data suggests a positive correlation between abnormal sex ratios and better socioeconomic status and literacy, and urban India has shown higher rates of child sex ratio skewing than rural India across multiple census cycles. Sex-selective abortion, unlike infanticide, requires access to ultrasound technology and private clinics – which are more accessible to wealthier families.

A study in Haryana found that the sex ratio at birth for upper-caste women was 127 males for every 100 females, compared with 105 for lower-caste women. Research from Bihar shows that the practice initially started among high castes and has since spread across caste lines. This cross-class pattern has a direct policy implication: most government welfare schemes designed to improve the value of the girl child – cash transfers, scholarship programs – target only lower-income households, leaving the affluent population that most heavily practices sex-selective abortion entirely outside their scope.

Tamil Nadu presents a distinct regional case. Unlike in northern states where female infanticide was first recorded during British rule, in Tamil Nadu the practice is largely a post-Independence occurrence, concentrated historically among specific dominant castes like the Kallars. Research on caste groups in Tamil Nadu shows that for landowning communities, son preference is rooted in preventing the fragmentation of land assets through dowry payments, while for warrior-lineage groups, the emphasis on male children is tied to honor, protection, and family defense. These are distinct cultural logics producing the same outcome.

Cultural legacy and the persistence of son preference 🔗

Laws and welfare programs address behavior. They are far less effective at changing the underlying belief systems that generate that behavior. Son preference in India is not a single monolithic attitude – it is a cluster of intersecting religious, economic, and social imperatives that reinforce each other across different communities.

Religion, inheritance, and old-age security 🔗

In Hindu tradition, sons are the only ones who can perform the funeral rites that allow a parent’s soul to reach salvation. Sons are tasked with lighting the funeral pyre and completing rituals that send parents to their salvation – a responsibility daughters cannot fulfill according to orthodox practice. Research published in PubMed confirms that sons carry on family names, property ownership, and key family traditions, while daughters are expected to leave their birth family upon marriage and join their husband’s household. In the absence of a comprehensive national social security system, this makes sons the primary old-age insurance mechanism for parents – a deeply practical consideration layered on top of religious obligation.

Inheritance and land rights are passed through male heirs, while women may be granted movable property as dowry – meaning that having a daughter does not just fail to build family wealth, but actively transfers it out of the family at the time of marriage. The dowry system, though illegal under the Dowry Prohibition Act of 1961, persists and has in many areas intensified. Observations of rural Indian dowries in the late 20th century record that 94% of bridal families paid a dowry, with average amounts reaching between three and eight times the annual male income. Upper castes, which tend to adhere more strictly to traditional religious rituals, also show more severely skewed sex ratios – suggesting that the religious dimension of son preference is not merely symbolic but directly measurable in demographic outcomes.

Daughter aversion as a distinct dynamic 🔗

Research on the drivers of female feticide points to an important distinction: son preference and daughter aversion, while related, are not the same thing. Son preference and the cost of providing dowries are very important in driving female feticide, but not the only reasons. Many Indian families would prefer to have both sons and daughters – but if forced to choose, they will choose sons. The degree of this preference correlates strongly with daughter aversion, meaning that the more families see daughters as liabilities, the more intensely they desire sons. This dual dynamic is what makes demographic interventions like conditional cash transfers for girl children only partially effective: they reduce the financial cost of daughters but do not address the underlying perception of daughters as temporary members of the family who will eventually belong to someone else.

Female feticide and infanticide rise above caste, creed, region, and community – they are sustained wherever patriarchal norms, inheritance patterns, and dowry economics converge. The gender bias that begins before birth extends through discrimination, neglect, and violence across a woman’s entire life cycle. Women themselves, having navigated a lifetime of lower status, sometimes internalize the same logic and participate in decisions to abort female fetuses – not because they do not value daughters, but because they have learned, through lived experience, that being born female in India carries real material and social costs.

Signs of change – and the work that remains 🔗

The picture is not uniformly bleak. India is progressively taking measures to enhance women’s position in society and implementing policies toward augmenting the value of a girl child. The overall sex ratio improved from 943 females per 1,000 males in the 2011 census to 1,020 in the 2019-2021 NFHS-5 survey – a substantial shift. Haryana’s sex ratio, though still among the lowest nationally, improved from 879 to 926 over the same period. Kerala, already strong, moved from 1,084 to 1,121. Cultural interventions have played a role too: in Tamil Nadu, theatre groups performing plays about female infanticide in communities where the practice is prevalent have opened new pathways for public dialogue and norm change.

Yet the persistence of underground sex-determination networks, the continued skewing of birth ratios in affluent households, and the lack of a robust tracking system connecting prenatal diagnostics to birth registration all point to gaps that legislation alone cannot close. Scholars and policymakers increasingly agree that the solution requires combining strict enforcement of the PCPNDT Act with equitable nutrition and healthcare, improved education policies that promote higher education for girls, equal inheritance laws for women, and community dialogue about providing an equitable environment at both social and cultural levels. The goal is not merely to change behavior under legal pressure – it is to change the underlying valuation of female life.

What do you think? If son preference persists even among educated, wealthy families who have full knowledge of the law, what does that tell us about the relationship between legal reform and cultural change in India? And given that daughters are often seen as “belonging to another family” after marriage, what structural changes in inheritance, property rights, or elder care could most effectively shift the economic logic that drives daughter aversion?

References

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_infanticide_in_India
2. https://www.scirp.org/html/3-2810071_52493.htm
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Conception_and_Pre-Natal_Diagnostic_Techniques_Act,_1994
4. https://knowledgecommons.popcouncil.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1646&context=departments_sbsr-pgy
5. https://www.insightsonindia.com/2025/10/23/son-meta-preference-sex-determination-rackets/
6. https://mednlaw.com/understanding-the-pcpndt-act-a-comprehensive-guide/
7. https://www.iosrjournals.org/iosr-jhss/papers/Vol.30-Issue5/Ser-4/F3005044043.pdf
8. https://macmillan.yale.edu/stories/missing-girls-sex-selection-india
9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_foeticide_in_India
10. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/377222468_Female_Feticide_and_Infanticide_in_India_A_Geo-historical_perspective
11. https://ballardbrief.byu.edu/issue-briefs/son-preference-in-india
12. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9234277/
13. https://www.academia.edu/26001830/Female_Foeticide_in_India_Looking_Beyond_Son_Preference_and_Dowry