Pavithra Srinivasan talks about a release of a book on one the major issues in India.

Gita Aravamudan, the author, went to describe her own experiences as she researched information and wrote the book. Coming across the issue in the early 1990s when she went to Usilampatti, Tamil Nadu, for a feature in The Week, she said that she had had a shocking time, as she discovered the enormity of the catastrophe, when girl children were being killed in hordes within a maximum of 48 hours of birth. More research, however, unearthed a bitter truth. “You couldn’t really blame the mothers. The life of a woman was so worthless, so absolutely horrifying that death was a better choice. The women there say, Better go to heaven than live a life like this.” Small reason then, the sex ratio has fallen to disturbingly low levels as 927:1000, and is even lower in states such as Gujarat.