There is a name for them in China. All those young men ? who fear they are never going to have a family because there are just not enough women around ? are called the Bare Branches.

In India, on the other hand, there are these women who have no names. When they are talked about, four little bracketed words ? ?Not Her Real Name? ? seem to underline the fact that a tragic tale is about to follow. In states far away from home, they are clubbed together as ?Paro?. A ?Paro? is a woman who has come from us paar ? or across the border ? to marry one of India?s bare branches.

One such woman is Anita (not her real name). She was brought to Haryana from Jalpaiguri to marry a man who couldn?t find a wife in a state where the number of women to men is dwindling by the day. Anita was locked up in her bedroom by her husband and raped for three weeks at a stretch.

Finally, when she had to be taken to a doctor, her story was told. The doctor led her to a local women?s group in Haryana, which stood by her as she healed.

Anita went back to her husband the other day, for she said there was no place for her in her parents? house.

The repercussions on a society where there are far more men than women have begun to show. Women are being married off to men who don?t speak their language or eat their food. All over Punjab and Haryana, areas that the just-released census report says have far fewer women than men, brides are being bought and brought from the poorer regions of Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Assam, where there is no shortage of women.

A recent study by the All India Democratic Women?s Association (AIDWA) conducted in four districts of Haryana showed that at any point of time, there are 300 to 400 men in search of wives. ?And these women are treated like second-class citizens,? says bureaucrat Satish Agnihotri, who has done extensive work on the subject. ?Even their children are not accorded the same status that a child born of a local woman enjoys,? says Agnihotri, secretary, women and child welfare, Orissa.

For long years, women?s groups and other concerned citizens have been talking about the dangers of an adverse sex ratio ? the number of women to men ? in India. In most parts of the world, including in some of the least developed nations, there are more women than men. In India, there are 933 women to men, the 2001 census says.

But the sex ratio, it has often been argued, does not give a clear picture. One of the factors behind Chandigarh?s low sex ratio of 777, for instance, is that it is a region full of male migrants.

But the child sex ratio ? which gives the number of girls for 1000 boys to the age of six ? is a fair indicator, for the ratio is not affected by factors such as migration.

Again, all over the world, barring a few countries here and there, there are more girls than boys, because, biologically, a girl child is sturdier than the boy. In India, there are 927 girls to 1000 boys. In the urban area of Shahjahanpur in Uttar Pradesh, there are 678 girls to 1000 boys. In five districts of Haryana, the figure is between 783 and 796. Ten of the 17 districts in Punjab have a child sex ratio of less than 800.

And the situation is getting worse. Ten years ago, there were only two districts in India which had a child sex ratio lower than 850. Now, there are 44. There were 28 districts where it was over 1000 ? now there are just 13.

?They just don?t want a daughter,? says demographer Ashish Bose, who has studied Punjab?s clamour for sons. ?They keep telling us, ?Munda chaiyen, kudiya nahin (we want sons, not daughters?),? he says.

Till recently, son preference was the phrase used to describe the tendency to treat a daughter as a liability. Now, AIDWA general secretary Brinda Karat refers to it as a daughter dis-preference. Agnihotri describes it ? for want of a better word, he says ? as daughter dislike.

But daughter dislike, some argue, leads to a situation where daughters are in short supply, and therefore much in demand. A school of thought ? once led by the late academic, Dharma Kumar ? suggests that an inverse sex ratio ends up benefiting women.

Over two decades ago, in an article in The Economic and Political Weekly, Kumar had maintained that there will be a growing demand for women as their numbers lessen, thereby raising their status in society.

The activists maintain that far from improving their social status, the scarcity of women leads to increased violence against women ? as the situation in Haryana and Punjab indicates. ?There is no study in India on this, but I would expect an increased crime rate in areas where there are a lot more men than women,? Agnihotri stresses.

A recent international study underlining the link between violence and unmarried men says that ?bare branches? ? so called because they are limbs of a family tree that will never bear fruit ? will constitute 12 to 15 per cent of the young adult male population in India and China by 2020.

And the two authors of the MIT press study ? Valerie Hudson of Brigham Young University and Andrea Den Boer of Kent ? caution that worldwide, more violent crime is committed by unmarried young adult men than by married young men.

The widening sex imbalance, the experts warn, will lead to a situation where the more affluent man will get married, while the one with little money or education will not find a bride for himself.

Released in May this year, the study ? ?Bare Branches: Security Implications of Asia?s Surplus Male Population? ? says that Chinese history has several examples? the Nien Rebellion, for instance ? of societal violence unleashed by bare branches.

It is a view that has its share of supporters in India. Sociologist Leela Dube has linked customs such as abduction and purchase of women in societies with adverse female sex ratios.

It has been said that a deteriorating law and order situation contributes to a fall in the sex ratio which, in turn, leads to a decline in law and order. ?It is a vicious circle, where the factors feed on each other,? warns Agnihotri.

It was to break this circle that activists led a campaign for effective legislation to combat the declining sex ratio till the early Nineties. The campaign was successful, to an extent, as the government enacted a central law banning sex determination ? a widely-prevalent practice of finding out the sex of a child in a pregnancy and then aborting the foetus, if female.

The law came into effect nearly 10 years ago, but sex determination is still a reality. Crime, Agnihotri stresses, has got the better of enforcement.

?And that is because this is the most bureaucratic Act ever,? stresses Brinda Karat. One of its serious drawbacks is that a complaint on female foeticide cannot be lodged with the police directly, but has to go through what has been described in the law as an ?appropriate authority?.

Not surprisingly, a mere 400 complaints have been lodged by the police. And 98 per cent of those, says Karat, deal not with the act of foeticide, but that the clinic where the abortion took place was not legal.

Even now, sex-determination tests are carried out in most parts of urban India, and increasingly in rural India. Bose points out that there is a special Rs 10,000-package that a section of doctors with ultra-sound facilities offers those contemplating foeticide.

Those whose foetuses turn out to be male get a refund of Rs 5,000 for an abortion not done.

Health activists such as Amit Sengupta of the Delhi Science Forum believe that doctors have to be punished for the law to be effective. ?We need to come down heavily on the medical professional. Just make an example of a few cases and put them in jail,? he says. ?The signal has to come from the highest level.?

The role of a doctor in the crime, clearly, cannot be understated. Some in the medical fraternity have argued that by aborting female foetuses, doctors are helping a mother not have an unwanted child.

?But what is at work here is purely the profit angle,? says Agnihotri. ?To me, a doctor who does this is like a man who adulterates bottled water. It is like a teacher who takes money to help a child cheat.?

To make the law more stringent, the National Democratic Alliance government introduced two amendments ? the law was extended to all new technological means of determining the sex of an unborn child and, acting on pressures from women?s groups, it no longer holds the mother responsible for the crime of aborting a female foetus.

But there is, clearly, more to the issue than law. Karat points out that as long as dowry is not countered ? legally and socially ? the sex ratio will always be imbalanced.

?Dowry has an unwritten social sanction,? she says. ?Dowry is the most committed crime, but has the least number of convictions,? she says.

Agnihotri adds to the list of dos. One of the first steps, he holds, is to improve the law-and-order situation in a place where female foeticide is a problem. And second, he believes that women have to be drawn into self-help groups. ?Give them economic muscle, and give them somebody to turn to,? he says. And another strong antidote, he maintains, is government policy that treats both sons and daughters as equals.

If steps are taken now, the next census may show a small improvement in the sex ratio. But if all factors remain the same, the child sex ratio, the experts warn, may fall by 10 to 15 points by the next census.

But the activists believe ? and that is why the battle goes on ? that the decline can be arrested. And they seek to stress that it is a dream made of modest hopes. ?A woman?s life is short, nasty and brutal,? says Agnihotri. ?I don?t want it to be long and peaceful ? but just less short, less nasty and less brutal.?