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http://www.flonnet.com/fl2404/stories/20070309002208900.htm
FRONTLINE -- Chennai -- Volume 24 - Issue 4: January 17 - February 09 2007
Formatted version with photographs at:
http://www.global-sisterhood-network.org/content/view/1627/59/
GENDER ISSUES
Faraway bride
AMAN SETHI in Varanasi
The instant weddings in the eastern districts of Uttar Pradesh
highlight a disturbing fact - the State's very low sex ratio.
Photo: Brides of Dhanmahipur village in Varanasi district leading a
marriage procession. In contrast to western U.P., the sex ratio is
above 1,000 in the backward eastern districts.
IT probably was not the most orthodox of liaisons, but he seemed like
a nice boy with a steady job and a sizable area of land, and so Sunita
(name changed) married him. Smiling self-consciously, she describes
how he arrived at her village of Sarai Mohana in Varanasi district of
Uttar Pradesh as part of a guided tour by eligible bachelors and their
families. "He approached my father, while his younger brother met my
cousin's family. We all went to Bidapur in Agra district, saw their
house, and a month later we were married." At the time of Sunita's
marriage, Sarai Mohana and the rest of Varanasi district existed on
the periphery of marriage tours, but three years on, her village finds
itself at the centre of the chatpat shaadi (instant wedding) circuit.
Matrimonial alliances in Varanasi and other parts of eastern U.P. have
happened at such a hurried pace that Sunita's wedding seems almost
sedate in comparison. Anxious grooms from western U.P. usually arrive
in teams of 10 or more, with a pre-assembled baraat (wedding
procession) of friends and family in tow, meet with an eligible and
willing bride through a local matchmaker, hurriedly exchange marriage
vows at the local temple, and return home in a matter of days.
The migration and movement of women has often produced anxieties among
the communities from which migration occurs and the state and media
organisations that track such movement. Migration, particularly of
women, is often spoken of in the same breath as exploitation and
trafficking and often described as an involuntary act forced upon
women. While the realities of trafficking, forced prostitution and
bonded labour cannot be ignored, they do not account for a huge number
of women who crisscross the country every year. Census 2001 reveals
that women account for 71 per cent, or 216.7 million of the 307
million cases, of total migration reported by place of birth. When
further disaggregated, the data suggest that 65 per cent of women
migrate because of marriage. While the veracity of the findings on the
motivation to migrate has been questioned by academics, who argue that
female labour migration is rendered invisible for a range of reasons,
statistics do suggest that marriage is a significant factor behind
migration. Then what makes the weddings of Sunita, her cousins and the
30 other women so different?
The chatpat shaadis can be seen as the point of intersection of two
separate and disturbing phenomena: the pull factor that sends men from
western U.P. in search of brides to the eastern districts and the push
factor that makes the women accept these men.
While a ratio of 950 females per 1,000 males is considered normal in
India, most countries tend to have more women than men. The national
average in India, as per Census 2001, is 933. A State-wise break-up of
the data ranks U.P., with a sex ratio of 898 way below in the
rankings, only slightly better than Punjab, Haryana and Sikkim. The
sex ratio of the population in the western districts of the State is
below 900, while it is above 1,000 in some of the eastern districts.
"There are no women in western Uttar Pradesh," said Motilal Rajbhar.
Motilal's daughter Gita is one of the most recent brides to have
married a boy from Moradabad, a district in western U.P. with a sex
ratio of 885.
"So any boy from Moradabad who does not belong to the upper caste, who
does not have a steady job, who is above 25 years of age, or who is
looking to get married for a second time, cannot hope to find a local
girl willing to marry him," he says.
PHOTO: A CLINIC ANNOUNCING its gender determination services in
Varanasi (AMAN SETHI )
Moving from west to east along the map of U.P. shows a sex-ratio
pattern that mirrors the path that the chatpat shaadi circuit traces.
Saharanpur, the western-most district, has a sex ratio of 868;
Muzaffarnagar has 872; Agra, one of the districts that a number of
women marry into, has a distressing ratio of 852; and Mathura's figure
is equally disturbing at 841. Azamgarh, one of the eastern-most
districts, has a healthy ratio of 1,026, followed by Jaunpur at 1,021.
Varanasi, while still much lower than the benchmark 950, has a sex
ratio of 908.
Thus, one of the primary push factors in these inter-district
marriages is the frightening unavailability of women in the western
districts, which points to an undeclared genocide directed at girl
children, denying them the right to life.
"Freedom for Rs.200!" exclaim the large painted doors of Mukti Clinic
in Varanasi. Ostensibly a maternal health centre, it is only one of
the several prenatal gender determination clinics that have sprung up
all over the State. Heavily protected by local mafias, clinics such as
these offer parents the option of aborting female foetuses right up to
the fifth month of pregnancy and could be one of the biggest factors
in the State's abysmal sex ratio. A large body of academic and
statistical work has illustrated that economic prosperity is actually
one of the largest contributing factors towards worsening sex ratios.
Prosperity gives parents access to ultrasound machines that allow for
gender determination and surgical procedures to enable female foeticide.
However, as Mukti Clinic illustrates, a complete package of gender
determination and subsequent abortion can cost as little as Rs.200 in
the first month and Rs.950 in the fifth month - a period when
abortions are rarely performed. A district-wise examination of per
capita incomes in the State only substantiates this prosperity-sex
ratio thesis.
While Varanasi's status as a major town would suggest moderately
higher per capita incomes, the crisis in one of Varanasi's oldest
industries has spelt disaster for one of its most vulnerable
communities - the Boonkar or weaver community, to which Sunita, Gita
and Motilal Rajbhar belong.
For long the makers of one of Varanasi's most famous export item - the
Benaras silk brocaded sari - the Boonkars are one of the most
impoverished groups in the State today. A decade of economic reforms
and policy changes have reduced the once-thriving community of almost
500,000 weavers to penury. "There are many reasons for the crisis,
which include shifts in demand and changing customer preference," says
Shruti Raghuvanshi, from the People's Vigilance Committee on Human
Rights, a Varanasi-based advocacy group. "But government policy is
perhaps the most significant factor."
Photo: Once a source of employment for entire families, the handloom
sector is in crisis. This has spelt disaster for the weaver community
of Varanasi. (AMAN SETHI )
A book published by the organisation explains that a decade of
liberalised textile policy saw the government reduce the number of
items reserved for exclusive production by handlooms to 11 from the 22
recommended under the Textile Policy of 1985. Also an increase in the
prices of raw silk was accompanied by an increase in cheap Chinese
remade silk imports. India also abolished quantitative restrictions on
silk imports in 2001 on the basis of its agreements with the World
Trade Organisation.
This resulted in thousands of handlooms across Varanasi district
falling silent. "Each house in this village had at least two
handlooms," says Bhagoti Devi, a resident of Bhagva Nalla, a weaver's
colony outside Varanasi. "Now there are just four in the entire
village." In the absence of weaving as a vocation, the only work now
available in the village is that of construction labour. It is
possible that the crisis has been the major push factor for the women
of the weaver community.
Chatpat weddings are usually arranged with the help of a local
facilitator or dalal. The dalal, who is often a woman, is usually one
who is either from Varanasi and has married someone from western U.P.,
or vice-versa, and so has family in the villages of both the bride and
the groom. Channoo Rajbhar is the dalal in Sarai Mohana and has got 30
young women from his village married off to young men from Moradabad
over the past three years.
The dalal is charged with verifying the antecedents of both sides and
arranging the modalities and logistics of the wedding. "Since the
weddings are usually conducted within days of the couple meeting, a
lot of planning is required," explains Rajbhar. "Pandits have to be
arranged, a village feast has to organised, gifts have to arranged."
However, the ultimate responsibility rests with the parents. "We
usually arrange a meeting of the parents, after that we are no longer
accountable."
The biggest draw of a chatpat wedding is the limited economic burden
placed on the parents. While each case is different, dowry is very
rarely taken in such alliances. In fact, the financial insecurity of
the weaver community implies that the groom's side often pays the
lion's share of the wedding expenses. The dalal extracts a percentage
of the costs as commission - and these are entirely borne by the
groom's family.
There is obviously a fair amount of money to be made on commissions;
one family told Frontline that the money for their daughter's wedding
was loaned to them by the dalal.
However, there is a growing number of instances in which young girls
have married apparently wealthy landowners from Agra, only to find
themselves in a one-room hutment in a faraway village, isolated from
their family and support systems.
Gunja, a 16-year-old from Sarai Mohana, and her parents took all
possible precautions before marrying her off to a youngster from
Nandapur village in Agra district. Her parents met the groom's
parents, and even visited their house in Agra. However, it was only
after she was married and went to live with her husband that she
realised that the couple posing as his parents were in fact his
relatives, and the concrete house her parents had been shown was not
his house. Gunja spent the next six months practically captive in a
one-room mud hut before her parents arrived and rescued her. She now
lives with her parents and refuses to return to her matrimonial home.
Uttar Pradesh's chatpat weddings are the latest addition to the larger
national marriage market that functions along a complex and intricate
network of brides, grooms and agents. States such as Punjab and
Haryana have taken to sourcing brides from States as far away as West
Bengal, Assam, Bihar and Tripura, apart from neighbouring Himachal Pradesh.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Dr. Lenin
Campaign Coordinator
Right to Food Campaign,UP
SA 4/2 A, Daualtpur, Varanasi-221002
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