India tries cash incentives to save its girls

The 2011 Census figures show the problem has only deepened and spread across most of the country. Dr. Jha calculated that up to 12 million girls have been aborted over the past 30 years in India. He says the desire for smaller families puts added pressure on parents of one daughter to make sure their next child is a boy.

Haryana offers $550 to families who have a second girl. But for all the incentive schemes put in place over the past decade, the 2011 Census saw only a tiny improvement in the state's ratio, which was more than offset by rapid falls in previously unaffected states like Kashmir.

"Whatever measures that have been put in over the last 40 years have not had any impact," said G.K. Pillai, India's home secretary, after the 2011 Census.

Hurdles yet

The flaws in the village prize program are numerous. It includes villages as small as 5,000 people. In 2009, there were only 69 boys and 82 girls born in Mullahera.

"With such small numbers, large fluctuations in the sex-ratio over time can exist just due to chance," says Sylvie Dubuc, a population researcher at the Oxford Institute of Social Policy.

Indeed, in 2010, the ratio evened out with 70 boys and 69 girls born.

Second, the village was not aware of the award before – and even after – winning. A third concern with cash rewards is their potential for abuse. Two different officials in Mullahera claimed to have possession of the 100,000 rupees.

A Haryana official also says that the winners look fudged. "I have noticed that, according to the statistics, the villages with better girl-child ratios are not given the prize. So there has to be some manipulation in choosing villages," says Praveen Kumar Singh, deputy director of monitoring and evaluation in the state department of health. He declined to give supporting data.

Greater transparency could help girl-child campaigners. "The release of more disaggregated census data down to a village level ... would actually create local debate, saying, 'Look, we are one of the worst offenders,' " says Jha.

Education campaigns

The award has inspired the four female health workers in Mullahera who feel their education campaigns and doctor visits with pregnant women have helped.

The program is designed to energize the community. "It's not intended to convince the parents of the child. It's the community many times which also participates in the decisionmaking," says state financial commissioner Rajan Gupta. He claims such programs helped Haryana improve its ratio.

For Mr. George, the activist, Haryana has nothing to brag about, with six of India's 10 worst districts for birth ratios. The problem – which he calls a "genocide" – is deepening. He argues that the Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques Act of 1994, which punishes doctors for performing sex determinations, is the untried solution. "We can count on our own hands the number of districts where the law has been implemented because everywhere the doctors are so powerful," says George.

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