India does, in fact, publish data (since 1999) on the sex ratio at birth.
The sex ratio of 15-year-olds in 2005 was not far from the sex ratio at birth in 1990.
Still, it is significant the sex ratio at birth is improving, not worsening.
Moreover, the country suffers from abnormal sex ratios: Beijing reports the sex ratio at birth as over 119 males for every 100 females.
In Punjab state, the sex ratio at birth improved from 129 male births per 100 female births in 1999-2001 to 119 in 2005-07.
The figures are not strictly comparable, because sample surveys show the sex ratio at birth, whereas the census gives it among infants up to the age of six.
It shows the sex ratio at birth, whereas the census shows the ratio for children aged 0-6 (census figures for the sex ratio at birth have not been published).
The 2005 "mini-census" reported that the sex ratio at birth, expressed as the number of boys per 100 girls, was 119--when the global average was somewhere between 103 to 106.
One of the few to have succeeded in ending the practice is South Korea, where the sex ratio at birth peaked in 1990 and has since fallen to near-normal levels.
People also worry that the ratio will get ever worse, deteriorating towards Chinese levels (which are even more extreme: on a comparable basis, China's sex ratio at birth is about 833).
Ms Banister points out that, in the 1953 census, the sex ratio at birth was more or less normal, but that at every age up to 14, girls were more likely to die than boys.
On the basis of the national sample surveys (NSS), they calculate that India's sex ratio at birth swung from 924 females per 1, 000 males in 2004-05 to 977 in 2011, a stunning turnaround in favour of girls.
The other reason specific to a few Asian societies is because a combination of traditional preference for sons and the availability of sex-selective abortion skewed the sex ratio at birth 20 years ago, leaving too few native-born women now.
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