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4.5 crore women are missing from India’s population records. Not because they vanished in one year. Because being born female was a DISADVANTAGE - for decades. To put it in perspective: - 4.5 crore is roughly the entire population of a country like Spain or Argentina. - It is like every single person in Delhi, twice over, GONE. Not on paper. In real life. These are not women who disappeared in one year. They are girls and women who were never born or died early, over many decades. This is what demographers mean by “missing women”: - They estimate how many women should be in a country if boys and girls were treated more EQUALLY. - Then they compare it with how many women ACTUALLY exist. The gap is the “missing” women. Behind that gap are patterns we already know, but often ignore: ✅ Sex-selective abortions. ✅ Neglect of girls’ health and nutrition. ✅ Domestic violence and unsafe abortions. ✅ Weak systems that fail to record, protect, or even value women’s lives. If 4.5 crore people died in one day, we would call it a global catastrophe. When 4.5 crore girls and women disappear slowly, over time, we call it “normal”. It should not feel normal. If you shape policy, education, law, healthcare, media, or tech - you shape this reality too. It is built into the systems we design and the biases we tolerate. ⚡ What Can Be Done Value every girl equally - in birth, health, and education. Count women clearly - fix data, census, and accountability. Challenge bias daily - at home, in schools, workplaces, and media. Read more here - https://medium.com/@saket-sambhav/4-5-crore-missing-women-in-india-the-silent-emergency-no-one-sees-670ec80e522a