I was reading the Times of India, when I came across a rather curious report. Apparently the Haryana Police stopped the wedding of a 15 year old minor. In a country that contributes to over 40% of the child marriages across the world, that in itself is not newsworthy. Minors do get married in rural towns and where police is informed they step in and make sure the rituals do not take place. Parents are suitably warned by the police, educated and counselled by social activists and life goes on.
The story of this minor was more complex. She was getting married on the same day as her maternal uncle. Her uncle was getting married to her prospective groom's sister. Now that the police had stopped her marriage, they had affectively stopped both weddings. A suitable bride (i.e. not someone below the age of 18) had to be found as her replacement for both the marriages to take place. The problem arose because of acute shortage of women. The uncle could only get married if he could in turn ensure the marriage of his future brother-in-law. Easy enough to solve if you have a niece, so what if she is only 15 years old?
As per the TOI,
"Haryana is reduced to this because of its deeply skewed sex ratio. A state government report admits there are just 822 females for every 1000 men in the 0 to 6 years category. The ratio falls even further in the literate population: 618 females to 1000 males. In some villages in the state, notably Malerna and Duleypur, the sex ratio at birth is 370 and 400 females per 1,000 males respectively".
There are families in this part of rural India that end up using the ancient barter system to ensure that their children don't remain unmarried. A girl and a boy from each side solves this problem nicely. The problem is when they don't have girls of marriageable age, then they make do with the minors in their family.
1 comment:
You may be right upto some extent only when you say that minor's marriage is a part of barter system. But i think it's not a major cause. Actually our socio-economic status is mainly responsible for it. number of communities still think that minor marriage will solve the famil problem by increase in the number of working hand. In they never know that instead of solving the problem it will increase the burdens
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