The Pre Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PNDT) act was passed over twenty years ago with the intention of reducing female foeticide and improving the sex ratio at birth. It's high time we evaluated the effect of this law scientifically and critically. The hypothesis behind the PNDT act was that it was the misuse of ultrasound scanning which was causing the sex ratio to decline. This is why the PNDT act empowers government officials to seal machines which are being misused.
Once these machines are sealed, one would then expect that the sex ratio in that locality would improve in the following year - after all, this is the objective of the Act. Since illegal ultrasound scanning has been stopped because of this act in that area, female fetuses would no longer be illegally terminated in that region, and more girls would be born in the subsequent year. Now I understand that patients can travel…
