India's 'bride Buying' Country

[dalsingh101]

Read this interesting article. I was just wondering what will be the situation in Punjab 30 odd years from now when the gender birthrate disparity kicks in. Is it a time bomb waiting to happen?

Any comments.

(PS - Article is about a year old).

India's 'bride buying' country

By Renu Agal

BBC News, Mewat, Haryana

Anwari Khatoon

Anwari was sold for $220 to a man in Haryana

Anwari Khatoon came visiting a relative in the northern Indian state of Haryana eight months ago, but ended up getting married against her will to a local man with six children from a previous marriage.

A man from her village in eastern Jharkhand state had accompanied the 22-year-old woman on her journey to Haryana.

When she arrived in the village, Anwari found the man and her relative pressuring her to marry the man with six children, a middle-aged truck driver.

Her new husband paid 10,000 rupees ($220) to the man who brought her to the village.

"Can a young, single girl get married to a father of six willingly?" asks Anwari.

"It is all fate. What has happened has happened. What can I do? My parents didn't even get any money from this deal."

Anwari is among the several thousand young women from all over India who are literally sold-off to men in Haryana, a state notorious for its low ratio of girls to boys.

The going rate for buying a girl in the state is anything between 4,000 and 30,000 rupees ($88 to $660).

Sex slaves

A cultural preference for sons over daughters has skewed India's sex ratio in places like Haryana.

As a result of female foeticide, there are about 861 women for every 1,000 men in Haryana, according to the last census. The national average is 927 women to 1,000 men.

Since there aren't enough local women to marry, Haryana's men pay touts to bring women for them to marry and to work on their farms.

Social activists reckon most of these women end up being used as sex slaves and then resold to other men in what looks like a flourishing market in trafficking of women.

The head of Asawati village told us about a girl called Ajmeri who arrived last month from the state of West Bengal in eastern India. She told the village head that "some people had come to see me and offered 10,000 rupees ($220)".

We went to look for Ajmeri. But when we reached her home she wasn't there. Her neighbours told us that she "may have been taken away by somebody" to another village.

Vicious cycle

These young women who are sold off as brides against their will are known in Haryana as 'paros'.

According to one estimate, there are almost 45,000 paros here from the dirt-poor, eastern tribal state of Jharkhand alone.

Touts pay their poor parents anything between 500 to 1,000 rupees (about $11 to $22) to take the daughter.

A 'paro' from Bihar

There are 45,000 'paros' from Jharkhand alone

Social activists say Haryana exemplifies the vicious cycle of exploitation of women and represents a society which does not respect women.

Haryana minister Randeep Singh Surjewala says the government is aware of the problem.

"Whenever we get complaints we take action. We are also trying to educate people socially and address the sex ratio problem," he says.

Last month a doctor and his assistant in Haryana were sentenced to two years in jail for revealing the sex of a female foetus and then agreeing to abort it. It was the first time offenders had been sent to jail for this offence.

Shakti Vahini is one NGO trying to help the paros by rescuing them and sending them to a safe home run by the state government.

"Every village has five to six girls who have been brought from outside," says Rishikant who works with Shakti Vahini.

Most of the rescued women were hired as farm workers by local men and were being sexually abused, Rishikant says.

In one case a man stands accused of beheading his paros wife because she refused to sleep with his brothers.

"There is a lack of political will, so no government is taking any steps to curb this problem," says Sanjay Mishra, who runs a voluntary group in Jharkhand associated with rescuing these women.

Meanwhile, Haryana's infamous market in women continues to flourish.

[dalsingh101]

No feelings towards this folks?

How we going to have Khalistan with such evil going on? Will it be the only country where men outnumber the women?

[Ambrosia]

Waheguru ji ka Khalsa, Waheguru ji ki Fateh,

Its sad every time we hear of things like that. This summer while taking "social psychology", in the whole book, there was 1 picture of a sikh police officer wearing turban, among non-sikh officers - it was a picture to demonstrate the difficulties of "Conformity"... but they didn't explain anything about the Sikh or the turban.

But ONE thing that IS in the book, that relates to Punjab is infact... female infanticide.

It stated that... PUNJAB has the HIGHEST rate of female infanticide (looking at the male to female ratios)... in the whole world. EVEN compared to CHINA (who is second in the world), who are by LAW only allowed to have one child. Now that says something.

So, it was interesting to know that Sikhism is an unknown religion in the west for the most part (I just saw a BIG book called "The religions of the world" where the big 5, and many many other smaller obscure religions were mentionned, but NOTHING on Sikhism...)..... but that the PUNJAB, the land of our Gurus, is known as the biggest killer of female infants... SHAME! Shame... shame!

Having said all this, it is up to US, to make sure it doesn't happen 1-in our families, 2-in our communities. And to change the mentalities ... and the biggest way to make someone change, is to make them feel bad about it, make them feel shame first. (its realizing they did bad, and what the truth is)... and how does that happen? by people STANDING UP for truth... actively.

How that is done... is up to you... but it must be done.