When the nurse stepped out of the supply room, her face turned somber as she approached with a child in her arms wrapped in a blanket. Her voice dropped to a hush, virtually like she was ashamed, as she introduced to the household: “It is a daughter.”

Nothing in regards to the nurse’s detrimental demeanor shocked Sunil Jaglan, the new child’s father. Growing up within the northern Indian state of Haryana, he was accustomed to folks’ robust choice for having sons over daughters.

But one thing inside him snapped, he mentioned, when he provided the nurse cash as a thanks gesture, and he or she refused as a result of she had not handed over a boy.

“Are you also ashamed of yourself?” Mr. Jaglan lately remembered asking the nurse when his daughter was born 11 years in the past.

That episode remodeled him into an unlikely champion of girls’s rights in a deeply patriarchal society. He turned the nurse’s 4 phrases, uttered virtually as a curse — “It is a daughter” — right into a slogan for a marketing campaign that well being officers say is answerable for saving the lives of lots of of women in Haryana.

Historically, Haryana had one of the crucial imbalanced intercourse ratios within the nation. In 2012, the state had 832 females per 1,000 males. And Mr. Jaglan’s personal village of Bibipur, with about 1,000 households, had one of the crucial skewed intercourse ratios in favor of males in all the state.

“No one wanted girls,” mentioned Mr. Jaglan, 41. “But everyone wanted a woman to do everything in their homes, from working in the farms to household chores.”

In India, the world’s most populous nation, and one which has skilled great financial progress, gender inequality stays deeply entrenched. In many households, particularly in rural areas, ladies are thought-about a social and monetary burden whose mother and father nonetheless pay hundreds of {dollars} in dowry presents to a husband’s household after arranging a wedding.

Despite an official ban on prenatal intercourse testing, ads for the service had been pasted on market partitions and highways throughout Haryana, and aborting fetuses as a result of they had been feminine was frequent. Although there are some restrictions, authorized abortion is extensively out there in India via the primary 20 weeks of being pregnant.

Shortly earlier than his personal daughter’s delivery, Mr. Jaglan had gained an election because the village headman, and he was now decided to make use of his new function to start a controversial marketing campaign towards the prenatal intercourse testing that he was certain was answerable for the alarming gender hole in his village, his state and lots of locations throughout India.

Although it was not inside his authority to take action — and a few thought-about it an egregious invasion of privateness — Mr. Jaglan made it necessary for village households to report a family being pregnant inside 4 weeks, a choice that angered many in Bibipur and past.

Through a community of girls informers, he and his staff of volunteers would comply with pregnant girls like detectives when it was suspected they had been being taken for prenatal intercourse assessments. If that was certainly the case, they might work to have the girl’s husband or her in-laws arrested, with the police working on the idea that the pregnant lady herself had little or no say within the resolution.

The concern of jail labored.

In 4 years, the intercourse ratio within the village improved from 37 ladies/63 boys per hundred newborns to 51 ladies/49 boys, in response to authorities well being information.

This mannequin of reporting pregnancies was quickly copied in different elements of Haryana — although with out Mr. Jaglan’s contentious necessary requirement.

The newest outcomes of India’s nationwide well being survey present that the state has improved the sex-ratio stability to 926 girls per 1,000 males in 2020-21, from 876 in 2015-16.

“He has been extremely effective in delivering the message,” mentioned Pratibha Chawla, a professor at Delhi University, who makes a speciality of gender research and has performed analysis in Haryana. “People listen to him because he is one among them; he knows how to connect with them because he understands how a deeply patriarchal society works.”

Emboldened by this success, Mr. Jaglan has grow to be a crusader to vary entrenched attitudes about rural girls, together with his rising nationwide prominence stemming partially from his skill to spin up attention-grabbing phrases within the Hindi language that he then makes use of social media to unfold.

In 2015, he launched #SelfieWithDaughter, urging individuals to take pictures with their daughters and share them on social media. His effort acquired a significant enhance after Indian cricketers and film stars began collaborating.

In one marketing campaign, he inspired males to make a pledge towards saying sexist slurs at dwelling, and in one other, he satisfied villagers to put in nameplates on their properties for his or her daughters, a convention previously reserved for boys.

And as together with his first effort, he has not shied away from controversial initiatives, with one calling on women and girls to keep up menstrual charts, seen to all within the family, to let the lads know when they need to be spared from exhausting labor on farm fields. While some have welcomed this, others fear it violates privateness and reinforces stereotypes about what menstruating girls can or can’t do.

The charts are additionally an try to destigmatize menstruation, Mr. Jaglan mentioned, to make the lads in a family “comfortable with the idea that periods are a normal routine for women.”

More than a dozen of his 100 or so social media campaigns have been adopted as coverage by the Haryana authorities, together with that the hoisting of flags in all villages on two of India’s most essential holidays — Republic Day and Independence Day — needs to be an honor reserved for women who’ve scored prime ranks in class exams.

Born and raised in Bibipur, Mr. Jaglan — who conceded that as a youthful man he was “too patriarchal” in his personal attitudes — earned a school diploma in laptop science after which taught math, earlier than quitting in 2012 to seek the advice of for academic establishments in search of grants. His village headman time period led to 2015.

On a current afternoon, Mr. Jaglan was strolling via the lanes of Bibipur when a number of girls acknowledged him. One by one, they lifted their fingers and positioned them on his head as an indication of blessing.

“He made us realize what a woman is capable of doing,” mentioned Shanti Jagda, 62, about Mr. Jaglan. “And more important, he taught us to say no.”

In 2012, he organized a Khap Panchayat in Bibipur. A strong physique of male elders, the Khap is usually thought-about anti-women in its method towards resolving marriage and household disputes. When he invited a lady to talk on the stage, he created a public fury.

That speaker, Santosh Devi, talked about feminine infanticide and dowry deaths (when a lady is murdered or kills herself over a dowry dispute) and mentioned she wished girls to affix the decision-making course of in village improvement.

“After giving birth to six children, he gave me the courage to stand up and speak in front of 4,000 people for my rights,” mentioned Ms. Devi, now 90.

Mr. Jaglan’s dedication to selling girls’s rights started drawing nationwide consideration after this. Prime Minister Narendra Modi talked about him 4 separate occasions in his month-to-month radio addresses that he generally makes use of to debate atypical people shaping Indian society.

But Mr. Jaglan says there’s nonetheless a lot to do, and he pointed to a casual survey he has been conducting during the last three years: He asks distinguished Indians — enterprise executives, authorities officers, professors and cops — about their household compositions.

Out of round 200 individuals, he mentioned 95 p.c advised him they’ve a “perfect family”: a boy and a lady.

“How is that possible?” Mr. Jaglan mentioned. He mentioned the reply maybe lies within the extra educated and wealthy figuring out find out how to circumvent Indian legal guidelines, or having the ability to afford to journey overseas, to proceed utilizing prenatal intercourse dedication.

Mr. Jaglan mentioned it’s his personal two daughters, Nandini, 11, and Yachika, 9, who encourage him to do no matter he can to stamp out feminine feticide.

“I will not rest until the last culprit is held to account,” he mentioned. “Every day, my two daughters inspire me to keep fighting.”

And he can hear round him a sound tied to his first profitable marketing campaign: In his village and lots of others throughout Haryana, the delivery of women is now celebrated with the banging of pots and pans by members of the family, a ritual earlier reserved for the delivery of a boy.