The Rare Woman.(female babies avoided in India)

Jasbir Sethi hardly seems a harbinger of India's woes. The grinning, dark-eyed 11-month-old boy crawls happily around his family's tasteful, upscale bungalow. But he's not your average Indian infant. His independently wealthy parents, Harpreet and Surinder, who did not wish to give their real names, paid about $3,000 for their baby boy--or, more precisely, for the guarantee of a male heir. Surinder, 29, underwent in vitro fertilization to implant a male embryo--twice, after she miscarried the first time. Mother and father--with advanced degrees in child psychology and business, respectively--freely admit that their son contributes to a dramatically worsening gender imbalance in India that's likely to breed all manner of social ills. "This imbalance is bad for society and we might have contributed to it," says 34-year old Harpreet. "[But] it's our choice as individuals and we should be allowed to do it."

Their attitude is becoming more and more common among India's wealthiest citizens. Most Indians with a bias for boys can't pay the high price tag for the in vitro procedure. But, risking jail and hefty fines, those who are at least middle class can illegally check their babies' sex using ultrasound technology, opting for abortion if they turn up female. Numbers emerging from the census of last year underscore this disturbing new trend: since 1991 the number of girls 6 and under dipped most sharply in the wealthiest urban districts with the highest literacy rates. In Delhi the girls-to-boys ratio dropped from 945 per 1,000 to 865. Areas that include the capital's toniest neighborhoods had as few as 796 girls. "The worsening figures in wealthy urban centers is counterintuitive," says Dr. Satish Agnihotri, a Calcutta-based gender researcher. "These urban and prosperous groups aren't killing, they're culling."

India has a long history of female infanticide--of baby girls being smothered, drowned in milk or simply abandoned. Long before amniocentesis testing or ultrasound technology, boys in India--as in most societies--were the children of choice. Each boy was an extra pair of hands for labor. Inheritance laws allowed land to stay in the family if it passed to a son. Bearing a girl was like watering someone else's field, according to an old Indian maxim. "The female sex in India is an endangered species," says Dr. Avnish Chopra, an authority on ultrasound techniques who has come forward to decry its misuse. "This mind-set comes from cultural values ingrained for years."

Now India's modern ...