'Pink' economic survey highlights gender issues in India

The government recognised India's obsession to birth sons, while presenting the economic survey document with a pink cover, in a bid to express solidarity towards women's issues and empowerment. The document tabled by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in Parliament recommends that Indians confront the ‘societal meta-preference’ for a son, observing that the adverse sex ratio of females to males has led to 63 million ‘missing’ women. To put it simply, the survey observes that many Indians continue to have children till they have a son. And what that effectively does is - it reduces the resources available to the girl child(ren) in most cases.