LETTER FROM INDIA: A marriage crisis is afflicting the northern Indian states of Punjab and Haryana, where thousands of young men are failing to find brides following nearly three decades of sex determination tests followed by female foeticide, writes Rahul Bedi.
The situation is so grim in these neighbouring provinces that families are resorting to "buying" girls from poorer states like Bihar and Bengal in the east. Haryana has 861 females for every 1,000 males compared to Punjab's 793 girls for 1,000 boys and the gap is fast widening.
"Decades of female foeticide have finally caught up with Punjab and Haryana," a sociologist in the common state capital Chandigarh said. The situation will worsen as sex ratios dip further, she added. Punjab's steadily plummeting sex ratio prompted the Akal Takht, Sikhism's supreme religious and temporal seat, to issue an edict last year banning female foeticide.
Priests organized conclaves, sparsely attended, at Sikh temples across Punjab where Voluntary Health Association activists sensitised congregations to the dangers of the state's decreasing female population, but to minimal effect.
In Fatehgarh Sahib district, 200 miles north of Delhi, for instance, the current male-female ratio is amongst India's lowest - 1,000 boys to 754 girls. Some villages in the region dominated by Jat Sikh farmers have 550-600 girls per 1,000 males.
"Punjab's intensely patriarchal social structure, has for many generations, supported a distinct gender bias against women and most people are either ignorant of the existence of laws enacted eight years ago banning female foeticide or are openly abusive of them," Dr Rainuka Dagar, of the Institute for Development and Communication in the state capital Chandigarh, said.
Given their traditional preference for boys, many Punjabis from rural areas view sex-determination tests and female foeticide as a means of planning their families and seriously believe the government must reward their efforts instead of threatening them with legal action, she added.
Sociologists said Punjab's male gender preference was further legitimised during 13 years of Sikh insurgency that ended a decade ago.
A host of anti-women diktats and edicts from the fundamentalist leaders of the armed movement emerged during this violent period in which over 50,000 people died, contributing to this sexual imbalance.
Farmer Balraj Singh, from Haryana's prosperous Panipat district, 80 km from Delhi, believes that boys must be married off by the age of 18. "But these days, they are unable to find brides even in their mid-thirties unless they travel to distant Bihar and neighbouring Bengal states. Even then it's not easy for these foreign girls to adjust to our ways and causes immense problems," he said.
And with galloping unemployment, shrinking land holdings in a predominantly agricultural state and no family responsibilities, Haryana's vagrant bachelors spent their time playing cards, drinking, harassing local females and making a thorough nuisance of themselves. "They have become a social menace," Singh declared.
While sex determination tests that cost as little as €15 are illegal across India, the law is regularly flouted and clinics offering them abound. With portable ultrasound machines, these tests can be done even in remote areas.
"It's an unholy alliance of tradition and technology. Ultrasound was not meant for sex selection," said demographer Ashish Bose. "It's a quick way for greedy doctors to make money." The Voluntary Health Association claims that affluence, improved healthcare and a larger number of trained health workers and midwives in rural areas have contributed to the increase of female foeticide in Punjab and Haryana that otherwise top the list of most developmental indices in the country.
"Most families in the two states want their children to be boys and keep aborting the girl child till they get them," a population expert said. It's a primeval instinct which legislation cannot change, she added.
India has a long history of female infanticide - of girls poisoned, suffocated, drowned, starved or simply abandoned and left to die. Girls are considered a liability, as expensive dowries have to be paid at their weddings that cost a tidy fortune. Even the poorest of peasants are under social pressure to make a bold statement by organizing lavish weddings, often by taking usurious loans.
Boys, on the other hand, are an asset. Even the most ineligible comes at a premium, commanding a dowry that in innumerable instances extends over years to a steady demand for money and other goods on the girl's family.
Refusal to comply often leads to suicide or "bride burning", a euphemism for murder on grounds of avarice.
According to a population expert, having fewer women does not mean that their importance or value increases. On the contrary, they are subjected to increased domestic violence and abuse, with brides being forcibly cloistered inside their homes to cook and produce male offspring, she added.