Visit any hospital in Delhi and you will find a display board carrying the message that sex selection test is prohibited. Still, the number of girl children is diminishing in India. Many analysts believe that the practice of aborting the girl child has taken such deep roots that there may be no escape from it. But when it becomes a global phenomenon, what would you call it? Mary Anne Warren coined one term way back in 1985 – gendercide.

Contrary to what many of us believe, selective sex abortion has gone global. India, China, South Korea, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia, the Balkans, Albania, Eastern Europe, and even some parts of North America – all face the growing phenomenon of silent killings. American journalist
Mara Hvistendahl, in her new book 'Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys over Girls and the Consequences of a World Full of Men' says there are 163 million "missing" females in Asia and elsewhere in the last three decades.

Hvistendahl says it is happening more in the emerging economies like India, China, South Korea, Taiwan and northern Vietnam. Earlier India had been cited as example of this tragedy but the global phenomenon is more disturbing for the policymakers. Rich places (Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, Bangalore) in India have been more guilty of female infanticide. Similar is the case with the urban pockets of China. The author explains, "Parents in rich countries produce boys, and parents in poor countries sell their daughters. That was a very sad thing I didn't expect to find."

According to the book, while there are 112 boys for every 100 girls, in China the number is 121 and there are several Chinese towns where the figure is more than 150. The figures stand at 115 in Azerbaijan, 118 in  Georgia and 120 in Armenia.

The book is full of anecdotes. The males can't find brides to marry. In countries like Taiwan and Korea, bachelors go on marriage tours to Vietnamese villages to get women sold by their parents. “One island in the Mekong Delta has sent so many women to Taiwan that it's called Taiwan Island,” she says, calling it a business.

The author warns of more violence in the region. “There will be millions of men, most of them at the bottom of the social ladder, who can’t find wives and most won’t be happy about it. Compare high sex-ratio areas where the men are now grown to low ratio areas, and there’s higher crime and more violence."

The Beijing based journalist for the Science magazine writes, "Distorted ratios led to crime in ancient Athens, China's Taiping rebellion and the American West."

Even as we blame cultural practices like dowry for female infanticide, Hvistendahl blames the western countries which supported the programme for controlling population growth in Asian countries. An idea emerged during controlling population growth, “Well, what if we can guarantee them a son on the first try or the second try?” She also blames the UN organisation like the UNFPA, the United Nation's main population agency, for refusing to own up to its role in funding sex-selection. The use of cheap, portable prenatal screening technology came in handy in developing countries obsessed with having baby boys.

Course correction is urgently needed for all such countries with skewed sex ratios. Some governments have brought in legislations but the onus lies as much on the citizens in the wake of the world’s worst human rights disaster in contemporary times.