Friday, 11 Jul, 2025
Bihar is making headlines for its shifting political landscape, but beneath the surface lies a quieter, more alarming crisis. The state has recorded the lowest sex ratio at birth in India for 2022, reflecting a disturbing and consistent decline over the past three years.
While Bihar has dominated headlines recently for political realignments in the run-up to elections, another alarming statistic has emerged quietly—but urgently demands attention. According to the latest Civil Registration System (CRS) report released by the Office of the Registrar General of India, the state has recorded the lowest sex ratio at birth (SRB) in the country for 2022.
Bihar reported just 891 girls born for every 1,000 boys—the lowest among all Indian States and Union Territories. What makes this more concerning is the consistent year-on-year decline. In 2020, Bihar's SRB stood at 964. It dropped to 908 in 2021 and further slid to 891 in 2022. Bihar is the only state in India showing this consistent downward trend in the birth sex ratio.
In stark contrast, Nagaland (1,068), Arunachal Pradesh (1,036), Ladakh (1,027), Meghalaya (972), and Kerala (971) recorded the highest SRBs in 2022. Other poor performers include Maharashtra (906), Telangana (907), and Gujarat (908). However, only Bihar shows a steady multi-year decline. Notably, Assam, which had reported the worst SRB in 2021 (863), improved significantly to 933 in 2022—highlighting Bihar’s troubling outlier status. At the national level, the average sex ratio at birth was 943 girls per 1,000 boys in 2022. Bihar's figure lags this average by a staggering 52 points.
Despite the skewed ratio, Bihar registered the third-highest number of total births in India in 2022—over 3.07 million. Yet, the gender split paints a disturbing picture: only 1.31 million of these were girls, while 1.47 million were boys. The absolute gender gap of over 160,000 is the widest in the country.
Nationally, 25.44 million births were registered in 2022, up from 24.2 million in 2021. While this points to a post-pandemic recovery, the gender breakdown remained unequal—52.4% boys and 47.6% girls.
This demographic crisis arrives at a politically sensitive time. With Assembly elections in Bihar scheduled for 2025, major parties have already started tailoring their campaigns for the influential women voter base. Historically, policies like the liquor prohibition and the Jeevika programme for self-help groups (Jeevika Didi) have earned Nitish Kumar's government substantial support from women.
In the 2024 general elections, 50.4% of votes cast in Bihar came from women, who make up 47.6% of the state's 7.64 crore electors. Amid growing competition for women’s votes—mirrored in recent poll promises across Maharashtra, Haryana, and Jharkhand—the falling birth rate of girls poses an ironic and urgent contradiction.
The CRS data poses a difficult but essential question: What is the value of women-focused schemes if the number of girls being born is itself declining? This is not just a statistical concern—it’s a social emergency. The consistent fall in Bihar’s sex ratio at birth indicates deeper issues: societal preference for sons, possible misuse of sex-determination technology, or under-reporting of female births. And if this is the picture painted by official registration records—not just survey estimates—the ground reality could be even grimmer.
Bihar has long struggled with gender inequality, low female literacy, limited female workforce participation, and high maternal mortality. The latest figures indicate that these challenges are now etching themselves into the very demographic fabric of the state. The patriarchal mindset, pervasive across many Indian states, continues to feed a dangerous meta-preference for sons. Left unchecked, this trend threatens to distort not just the gender balance, but the entire social structure.
The decline in Bihar’s sex ratio at birth is a silent but a real crisis. One that reflects how deeply entrenched social preferences can outpace state regulations and policy interventions. As Bihar prepares to go to polls, the falling number of girl births stands as a stark reminder: Empowerment begins with existence.
