A SPECTRE haunts India, the spectre of a society with a huge population of sexually frustrated bachelors preying on women because, after decades of female foeticide, there are not enough to go around.

In northern India, where the practice of having an ultrasound test to determine the sex of the foetus and then opting for an abortion if it is a girl has been most pronounced, a crisis is developing. Young men are reaching their early thirties (over the hill by Indian standards) without finding brides. Feminists claim that the shortage of women will culminate inexorably in a surge of sexual violence against women.

Social scientists say that India is missing 40 million girls, aborted en masse over the years by parents, rich and poor, who saw them as a liability, while boys are cherished for continuing the family line and providing economic security. All over India, since the 1980s when the country was flooded with cheap ultrasound technology, this mobile killing machine, wielded by doctors with no ethics, has been doing its lethal work. Villages may not have clean drinking water or electricity, but they have access to ultrasound tests. Some clinics in towns load the machine on to a van, along with a generator, and go to remote towns offering sex-selection services. In some villages no girl has been born for years.

The Indian Medical Association estimates that five million female foetuses are aborted each year. As a result, the sex ratio in the 0 to 6 age group in some northern areas (where the craze for boys is at its worst) is amazingly skewed: 793 females for every 1,000 boys. In some areas it is 754, and in parts of Punjab and Haryana, the figure is about 600.

The 2001 census showed such a sharp drop in the sex ratio that it prompted the UN to urge India to take drastic measures.

Some gynaecologists in Delhi are fed up with patients who keep wanting abortions after the foetus is shown to be a girl: “One woman, who is young and married, with no children, has terminated all her three pregnancies because it was a girl,” says Dr Rahul Manchanda, a gynaecologist.

The law forbids doctors or technicians from revealing the sex of the foetus but it continues illegally. “Fearful of being caught, doctors use code phrases to convey the sex of the foetus — ‘the sky is blue’ or ‘your baby will play football’ or ‘your child is like a doll’,” says Dr Gautam Sehgal, of the Indian Healthcare Federation.The results are proving to be devastating. In Haryana a whole generation of young men is failing to find wives because a quarter of the female population has simply disappeared. In Punjab men who want to marry and raise families are growing desperate.

“With no jobs or family responsibilities, young boys spend their time playing cards, drinking, harassing females and making a nuisance of themselves. We believe a boy gains adulthood at 18; he must be married by then. But these days, boys are entering their mid-thirties and not finding a girl,” says Balraj Singh, a farmer in Hoshiarpur in Punjab.

Ad hoc solutions to the bride famine are emerging. Women are allegedly being shared. Women’s groups are reporting cases of fraternal polyandry. Brothers are sharing the same woman, but keeping it discreet. “The young woman is formally married to only one brother. Neither she nor her parents have any idea of their real intentions. Later, her husband’s brothers also have sex with her,” says Ravinder Bhalla, a sociologist.

These ménages can go badly wrong. Police in Uttar Pradesh say five cases of fratricide have been registered in the past year: murders provoked by sexual jealousy or rivalry. They also raise emotional and social issues. When children are born, who is “Daddy” and who is “Uncle”? Paternity, as it turns out, is rarely a big issue: since the brothers don’t marry different wives, they don’t go their separate ways — and thus don’t demand a division of the family land or property. In rural communities, where most families own only small plots, this is deemed a great blessing because it often means the difference between survival and ruination.

With high unemployment in the north, the corollary of frustrated young men hanging around streets is more crimes against women. “Levels of sexual violence are rising, and will only get worse,” says Brinda Karat, of the All India Democratic Women’s Association.

Some people are taking action. A government official in Haryana, Dr B. S. Dahiya, sends decoys to clinics asking for sex-determination tests; the guilty doctors are then arrested. Says Dahiya: “Violence against women is rising. We’ll have more unnatural practices, such as brothers sharing a wife. In a few years, no woman will be safe. There will be abductions and rapes, even of minors. Even married women won’t be safe.”