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Missing women of Asia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_women_of_Asia

But in a society where women are so valuable that they need to be shared, what's the incentive for female infanticide?

Is it possible that many of the women disappeared into harems of the nobility?

The women are valuable to grown men, they're not valuable to the parents that have to raise them. That's where the infanticide comes from.

It's very sad. In fact, the only state in India where there are more women than men (which is the natural state in most everywhere in the world) is Kerala, the state I'm from. I believe this is because the state has been run by the Communists for most of its post-independant history (which has also resulted in a 99% female literacy rate, again by far the highest in India).

Sometimes we forget about the social benefits communism has provided in certain parts of the world. I have no doubt, for example, that Afghanistan would be far healthier, wealthier and more advanced today if the Russians were not driven out in the 80s.

This is an important point, but I think Afghanistan as an example is a bit misguided. Home-grown (as much as possible) and home-governing communists are usually going to do a much better job than a colonial government of any political orientation, which is what I fear Afghanistan would have ended up as.

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