Shortage in brides drives men to look farther afield
When Sadhuram Berwal wanted to get married, his family went about it in the traditional Indian way, asking relatives, neighbors and temple priests to suggest a young woman. But after an extensive search among women of his caste in his area, no suitable bride was found.
A larger factor had narrowed the field sharply — a skewed male-female ratio that is particularly pronounced in his home state of Haryana, in India's north, due to sex-selective abortions in a society where many families prize boys over girls, mostly for economic reasons.
Through a friend, Berwal eventually found a woman 2,700 kilometers to the south, in the state of Kerala, who was willing to marry him.
That dramatic decision more than 10 years ago shocked his village of Sorkhi at the time but has become increasingly common these days in northern India. Om Prakash, a retired teacher and village elder, said, “In Sorkhi alone, there are about 200 to 250 young men who wish to get married, but ... they can’t find girls to wed.”
India banned prenatal sexdetermination tests in 1994. It is also illegal for doctors or technicians conducting sonograms to reveal the sex of a child before birth, but the practice still flourishes underground.
In Haryana, the state with the most imbalanced sex ratio, there are 834 girls per 1,000 boys age 6 and under, according to census figures.
Boys are preferred among many Indian families because of the heavy economic burden girls bring with their dowries, which often include refrigerators or motorcycles in addition to large sums of money and gold. Daughters are also considered less desirable because they will probably move away from home after marriage and be unable to care for parents in their old age.
The arrival of Berwal's wife started a trend in the village as more men sought wives from Kerala. Several Kerala women who agreed to marry men in Haryana said they did so partly because the grooms’ families agreed to pay all wedding expenses and did not take any dowry.