HARYANA’S poor sex ratio at birth (SRB) is back in the news. In the first four months of 2026, the ratio has fallen sharply to 895 girls for every 1,000 boys, as against last year’s 925. Charkhi Dadri has reported the lowest ratio of 769 girls per 1,000 boys. Despite being Haryana’s wealthiest and most urbanised district and home to global capital, Gurugram’s ratio stands at 863.
The response from district administrations and police and health officials has been prompt and familiar: intensifying sting operations, crackdown on illegal sale of abortion kits and dismantling organised interstate networks involved in sex determination, along with village awareness campaigns, wall paintings and renewed invocation of the Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao slogan. Officials, as always, are speaking the language of enforcement and persuasion. The public is to be warned, educated, corrected.
But even after decades of campaigns, policing and slogans, a more uncomfortable question demands an ask: what if the state is misdiagnosing the problem itself? Renowned Australian policy scholar Carol Bacchi has argued that public policy does not merely solve problems; it actively constructs them. As per her framework, the focus shifts from simply asking “What is the problem?" towards “What is represented to be the problem?" Haryana’s falling SRB offers a textbook example.
The crisis is framed in terms of deviant behaviour: it is considered to be a problem of immoral doctors, criminal interstate networks, backward rural attitudes and families shaped by patriarchal mindsets. Once the problem is represented this way, the solutions naturally revolve around surveillance, punishment and behavioural reform. Hence, the sting operations, raids, posters and awareness drives.
Yet, as Bacchi notes, all framings are inherently political. In the case of SRB, the framing positions the state as a protector and disciplinarian while shifting scrutiny away from deeper structural failures. The “problem" is framed as one of problematic citizens rather than ineffective institutions.
Even the official campaigns often reduce a profoundly political and structural issue into a morality play. Families and communities are urged to “save" and “value" daughters. But the wider structural problem of gender inequality remains curiously untouched.
Consider the paradox of Gurugram. If urbanisation automatically weakened son preference, Gurugram should have been at the forefront of Haryana’s demographic recovery. Instead, it continues to be one of the state’s worst performers. This shows that we must abandon the simplistic assumption that urbanisation, education and rising incomes naturally contribute to gender justice. They do not.
Research across East Asia and South Asia has repeatedly shown that son preference withstands economic transformation. Monica Das Gupta and others (2003) noted that the persistence of skewed sex ratios in countries like India, China and South Korea stemmed not merely from “culture" in the abstract but from durable family systems and kinship structures that privilege sons economically, ritually and socially.
In north Indian kinship systems, sons continue to be tied to inheritance, lineage continuity, old-age support and social status in ways daughters are not. Despite legal reforms and developmental gains, daughters are perceived as transient members of the natal household. Under such conditions, access to sex-selective technology merely modernises/eases patriarchy; it does not dismantle it.
This is precisely why the reliance on prohibition and policing has yielded limited success. It might be misplaced to see illegal sex determination as the root cause, when it is often merely the instrument. Crackdown on one clinic leads to the emergence of another. Banning abortion kits might shift demand elsewhere. Technology adapts because the underlying social logic remains intact.
Nor is the issue confined to “backward villages", as rhetoric often implies. In fact, Haryana’s urban areas have witnessed a steeper long-term decline in child sex ratio than rural regions. Between 1981 and 2001, the decline in urban Haryana far outpaced that in rural areas. Affluence has not diluted son preference; in some contexts, it has improved families’ ability to act upon it.
Thus, by reducing the SRB imbalance to criminality and ignorance, we avoid confronting harder questions about the institutional organisation of society itself. Why does women’s participation in the workforce remain low despite rising education? Why are inheritance laws weakly enforced in practice? Why does marriage continue to impose crushing economic and social burdens on families with daughters? Why are women systematically excluded from political and economic power even in rapidly urbanising regions?
These questions rarely feature in the official discourse because the usual action plan is easier to implement than to restructure property relations or invest meaningfully in social security systems that reduce dependence on male heirs.
Even the Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao campaign reveals this contradiction. This is certainly not to say that educating girls is not important. Rather, the rhetoric of saving girls often positions daughters as recipients of state benevolence instead of equal citizens entitled to autonomy and economic security. Feminist scholars have long argued that education alone does not automatically undo discriminatory gender norms. Schools might reproduce patriarchal expectations, labour markets might continue to exclude women, families can still privilege sons despite daughters’ academic success.
Haryana’s crisis, therefore, cannot be solved through surveillance and symbolism alone. More raids may generate headlines and more posters may create visibility. While both are important, neither addresses the institutional foundations of son preference. We must stop treating the crisis as simply a failure of individual morality. The crisis mirrors inequalities embedded within the social order.
