Session moderator Rajni Bakshi said that in Mumbai, the lowest sex ratio was “in the most affluent areas, in Malabar Hill and Colaba…”, whereas in “tribal areas” outside the city, “the child sex ratio is just fine. It’s as nature would have it.”
“For maybe 20 years we assumed that as people become more educated and more modernized, these traditional fixations with the male child would decline,” she added, unapologetic that the session veered into the realm of gender inequality from its intended topics of consumption, philanthropic patterns and societal norms. “You’d think that prosperity would improve social indicators; but why are the tribal areas doing better on the gender issue.”
In an interview after the session, Bakshi, a fellow at Gateway House, a Mumbai think tank, concurred, saying that for many parents on an “aspirational treadmill”, having fewer children is more compatible with the “projection for their own prosperity. Maybe you are doing well enough, but you don’t want two children because you won’t be able to afford to send both of them to an American university. They’re making a calculation and if they’re only going to have one, (they) seem to prefer a boy child”.