INDORE: The state has improved sex ratio of population to 970 females per 1000 males but the sex ratio for population under 7 years of age is lower at 940 females, showed National Family and Health Survey-5 figures.
Sex ratio is number of females per 1000 males in the population. The sex ratio (0-6) is defined as number of girls per 1000 boys in the age group.
A senior official in know-how of PCPNDT programme on sex ratio improvement said, “Regular monitoring, categorisation of districts under four categories from A to D based on sex ratio, improving community awareness programme, IEC improvement, tightening framework for stopping sex identification and others.”
“The department has also standardised forms for district inspection and monitoring committee and increased honorarium for motivating them for regular inspection along with doubling of the incentive for informing about sex selective abortion in Mukhbir scheme”, official added. “These all steps together have paid off”, claimed the official.
The survey figures further showed a divide in sex ratio of population in urban and rural areas. There are more females in rural areas per 1000 males ie 976 females in these parts of state than 976 in urban areas.
In the case of the 0-6-year group, urban areas have 944 females per 1000 males than 939 in rural areas, showed NFHS-5 survey records.
In case of district wise bifurcation, there are 20 districts with better sex ratio at birth than state’s average. There are 12 districts in Madhya Pradesh that has been showing a declining trend in sex ratio at birth while 19 had reported less than state average figure.
