“The Prenatal Diagnostic Techniques Act is powerful indeed, but rarely enforced. Passed after India realised that modern medical techniques such as ultrasound scans and amniocenteses were frequently being used to identify female foetuses – which are then aborted – the PNDT Act requires the registration of all ultrasound machines, and bans doctors from revealing the sex of the foetus to expectant parents. The 1994 law was an attempt to reverse India’s rampant use of sex-selective abortion, and the lopsided sex ratio this has produced. India’s 2001 census showed that there were 927 girls to every 1,000 boys, down from 945:1,000 in 1991 and 962:1,000 in 1981. Until recently, no doctors had been put in prison under the PNDT Act. But late last month a doctor was jailed for three years after telling an undercover investigator that her foetus was female, and hinting that she could abort it.

…In 1991, not a single district in India had a child sex ratio of less than 800:1,000. By 2001, there were 14. “What we’re dealing with,” says Sabu George, India’s leading activist, “is a genocide.”

…If such trends continue, the future could be nightmarish. In their 2004 book Bare Branches: the security implications of Asia’s surplus male population, the political scientists Andrea den Boer and Valerie Hudson argue that the existence of all these millions of frustrated Asian bachelors will boost crime and lawlessness. They speculate that, to find an outlet for the continent’s sex-starved males, Asian governments might even need to resort to fomenting wars. Indian activists also fear that the girl shortage will create a hyper-macho society.

Spiralling numbers of rapes and rates of violence will lead to the increasing sequestration of women. Men with money will be able to afford wives, who will quickly become a status symbol. “Powerful men would maintain zanankhanas [harems] to demonstrate their power and influence,” writes the activist R P Ravindra. Poorer men, “finding no companions, might resort to any means to force a woman into a sexual/ marital relationship”.

In pockets of India, this has already begun.” (New Statesman )