The story so far: There are far fewer women than men in India, an ill-kept secret which reveals itself time and again through the numbers. More than 13.13 lakh girls and women went missing in the country in the three years between 2019 and 2021, per Union Home Ministry data tabled in the Parliament recently. The figures compiled by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) found that Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal and Maharashtra contributed to the bulk of the cases. Madhya Pradesh held the most damning record: it failed to trace 36,104 women, per NCRB’s 2021 report.
Experts, however, note that India’s calculation of women reported missing is not wholly representative of ground realities. “Women could be eloping for inter-caste or inter-faith marriage or they might be leaving an abusive situation at home. Some families also abandon women who are disabled,” explains Professor Juhi Sidharth, an Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Gender Studies at Flame University, Pune. But NCRB’s aggregate data currently doesn’t reflect these complexities.
