The Vital Statistics of India, released by the office of the Registrar General of India (RGI) , claims that the sex ratio at birth in the southern states of the country have precipitously declined. The southern states, hitherto, were known to have maintained impressive sex ratios vis-a-vis the northern states, where levels of social development indicators for females, such as health, female infanticide and literacy have traditionally been lower.

However, data collected by the RGI showed that, in 2016, Andhra Pradesh matched a Rajasthan for the worst sex ratio (806), compared to the national average of 877. Karnataka, too, has had a steep fall, from 1,004 in 2007 to 896 in 2016. Tamil Nadu stood fifth from the bottom on the list, with its ratio falling from 935 to 840 over the same period. Against a backdrop of recent interventions at the state level, Haryana, which had recorded the worst SRB (830) in the 2011 Census, has managed to improve its showing (865) in 2016.

Equitable economic and social development, where southern states have historically performed well, does not come about by maintaining such low human development numbers. Only Kerala—which has always fared well as per this report—managed to retain its reputation, with a sex-ratio-at-birth (SRB) of 954 in 2016. However, whether the data in the report is reliable seems to an important question. In 2009, 2010 and 2011, as per previous editions of the Vital Statistics report, Assam recorded sex ratios of 931, 1,244, and 920, respectively. Similarly odd numbers have been recorded for Tripura, Arunachal Pradesh and the Andaman & Nicobar Islands. According to The Times of India, even a senior census officer in Andhra Pradesh believes that the fall in the SRB in Andhra from 971 in 2015 to 806 in 2016 seem “abnormal”. What is more, data from the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) 2015-16, or NFHS-4, do not corroborate the Vital Statistics data— Karnataka’s SRB was 910, Tamil Nadu’s was 954 and Andhra Pradesh’s was 914. Also, it is unlikely that in states where the registration of live births is high and abortion rates are relatively lower compared to, say, Chandigarh or Delhi, female infanticide of the scale that would bring down the sex ratio in this manner would be occurring.