A dearth of women due to female foeticide will result in them being traded like commodities. The horrible truth is that this is already happening.
When such pains are taken to produce only male children, what happens to those children when they grow up? A conversation with a group of young men from Haryana reveals the truth. They are all over 30, all unmarried, and are unable to find life partners because there simply are no girls.
The situation is so dire that in the next 10 years, there will be 2 crore men who will be unable to find spouses. The end result is a marriage bazaar where women will be bartered and traded, and crimes against women will only grow and become more heinous. Does this sound like fiction?
Social worker Virendra Vidrohi from Alwar, Rajasthan, tells the story of his region’s “brides” – some 15,000 women who have been brought from places such as Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhatisgarh, Odisha, West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh because the men of Alwar district cannot find women in their own area. These women, who are from poor families, have been purchased, and Virendra ji says that 15,000 is not even an alarmingly large number as there are 1,900 villages and towns where this practice is carried out.
Anandbala Todarmal from Bhilwara adds that in her community of Jains too, the shortage of women due to female foeticide has resulted in brides being procured from other states.
Karminder Kaur, who is a state protection officer from Haryana, highlights that the buying of women has led to a further degradation in their status and condition. Far from being treated like brides, they become commodities and are used by all the men in the household. Moreover, they cannot protest as they are told they will be thrown out and other women will be bought in their place. The other problem is that women from Haryana itself are extremely unsafe. Any woman who goes out of doors – be it for studies or to the workplace – faces the possibility of assault, kidnapping and rape from the men of Haryana.
In such a grim scenario, it comes as a ray of hope that there are actually people who have managed to change the situation.
When such pains are taken to produce only male children, what happens to those children when they grow up? A conversation with a group of young men from Haryana reveals the truth. They are all over 30, all unmarried, and are unable to find life partners because there simply are no girls.
The situation is so dire that in the next 10 years, there will be 2 crore men who will be unable to find spouses. The end result is a marriage bazaar where women will be bartered and traded, and crimes against women will only grow and become more heinous. Does this sound like fiction?
Social worker Virendra Vidrohi from Alwar, Rajasthan, tells the story of his region’s “brides” – some 15,000 women who have been brought from places such as Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhatisgarh, Odisha, West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh because the men of Alwar district cannot find women in their own area. These women, who are from poor families, have been purchased, and Virendra ji says that 15,000 is not even an alarmingly large number as there are 1,900 villages and towns where this practice is carried out.
Anandbala Todarmal from Bhilwara adds that in her community of Jains too, the shortage of women due to female foeticide has resulted in brides being procured from other states.
Karminder Kaur, who is a state protection officer from Haryana, highlights that the buying of women has led to a further degradation in their status and condition. Far from being treated like brides, they become commodities and are used by all the men in the household. Moreover, they cannot protest as they are told they will be thrown out and other women will be bought in their place. The other problem is that women from Haryana itself are extremely unsafe. Any woman who goes out of doors – be it for studies or to the workplace – faces the possibility of assault, kidnapping and rape from the men of Haryana.
In such a grim scenario, it comes as a ray of hope that there are actually people who have managed to change the situation.
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