platinum786

India's 'bride buying' country

By Renu Agal

BBC News, Mewat, Haryana



Anwari was sold for $220 to a man in Haryana


Anwari Khatoon came visiting a relative in the northern Indian state of Haryana eight months ago, but ended up getting married against her will to a local man with six children from a previous marriage.
A man from her village in eastern Jharkhand state had accompanied the 22-year-old woman on her journey to Haryana.

When she arrived in the village, Anwari found the man and her relative pressuring her to marry the man with six children, a middle-aged truck driver.

Her new husband paid 10,000 rupees ($220) to the man who brought her to the village.

"Can a young, single girl get married to a father of six willingly?" asks Anwari.

"It is all fate. What has happened has happened. What can I do? My parents didn't even get any money from this deal."

Anwari is among the several thousand young women from all over India who are literally sold-off to men in Haryana, a state notorious for its low ratio of girls to boys.


The going rate for buying a girl in the state is anything between 4,000 and 30,000 rupees ($88 to $660).


A cultural preference for sons over daughters has skewed India's sex ratio in places like Haryana.

As a result of female foeticide, there are about 861 women for every 1,000 men in Haryana, according to the last census. The national average is 927 women to 1,000 men.

Since there aren't enough local women to marry, Haryana's men pay touts to bring women for them to marry and to work on their farms.




Social activists reckon most of these women end up being used as sex slaves and then resold to other men in what looks like a flourishing market in trafficking of women.

The head of Asawati village told us about a girl called Ajmeri who arrived last month from the state of West Bengal in eastern India. She told the village head that "some people had come to see me and offered 10,000 rupees ($220)".

We went to look for Ajmeri. But when we reached her home she wasn't there. Her neighbours told us that she "may have been taken away by somebody" to another village.

These young women who are sold off as brides against their will are known in Haryana as 'paros'.

According to one estimate, there are almost 45,000 paros here from the dirt-poor, eastern tribal state of Jharkhand alone.

Touts pay their poor parents anything between 500 to 1,000 rupees (about $11 to $22) to take the daughter.



There are 45,000 'paros' from Jharkhand alone

Social activists say Haryana exemplifies the vicious cycle of exploitation of women and represents a society which does not respect women.

Haryana minister Randeep Singh Surjewala says the government is aware of the problem.

"Whenever we get complaints we take action. We are also trying to educate people socially and address the sex ratio problem," he says.

Last month a doctor and his assistant in Haryana were sentenced to two years in jail for revealing the sex of a female foetus and then agreeing to abort it. It was the first time offenders had been sent to jail for this offence.


Shakti Vahini is one NGO trying to help the paros by rescuing them and sending them to a safe home run by the state government.

"Every village has five to six girls who have been brought from outside," says Rishikant who works with Shakti Vahini.

Most of the rescued women were hired as farm workers by local men and were being sexually abused, Rishikant says.



In one case a man stands accused of beheading his paros wife because she refused to sleep with his brothers.


"There is a lack of political will, so no government is taking any steps to curb this problem," says Sanjay Mishra, who runs a voluntary group in Jharkhand associated with rescuing these women.

Meanwhile, Haryana's infamous market in women continues to flourish.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4862434.stm

Asim Aquil

Hmmm. You should see the treatment that these girls from India get in Dubai's clubs.

They're almost all here without their will. Somehow they were fooled into coming here and are now stuck at the hands of their employers.

They're freakyishly hot! But so god-damn illiterate. Lol, they'd come upto you and start speaking in Hindi film lingo. Guys too desperate and living in lalala land go crazy over them and buy them off from their employers.

Nowadays they even text you back, to lure you back into those clubs. The language they use, is so goddamn funny. "Mere dil pe aaj ek dastak hui, aur teri yaad ayi...". Freakin hillarious.

Lahori paa jee

Whats else do u know . Please tell us in a littttttttllllllleeee detail . LOLZ.

Guys just wait and see before this thread too is twisted and turned into a pakistani bride shop by our dear fellows here at WAB

__________________
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Chali hai rasm keh koi na sar utha keh chaley

Vaman

*bump*

Ray

__________________


"Some have learnt many Tricks of sly Evasion, Instead of Truth they use Equivocation, And eke it out with mental Reservation, Which is to good Men an Abomination."

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HAKUNA MATATA

Asim Aquil

lol, not that I've been a regular at these places. Just went in with some of my "filthy rich and got no idea where to spend money so I will give some chick shaking her butt and smiling at me, thousands of bucks" kinda friends.

Everyone has the same story. Someone in India tricked em and brought them to Dubai. They're in deep debt. They're asked to whore themselves off and pay their debt to their employers.

As I said they're very pretty but really dumb. So by the time they raise that much cash and free themselves off, they've pretty much got no other skill and kinda continue till they don't get a rich sucker Arab who'd marry her and keep her in some bigass villa where he'd visit her once a week. They get all the super cool cars, servants and everything then.

Weirdness? It is.

platinum786

look if nobody has anything constructive to add wth regards to the plight of these women then don't comment at all. Ignoring and mocking the poor will get us nowhere but a step closer to hell.

Vaman

1. Open an ashram. I suppose people like Plat, Neo and Asim have enough time and money AND the desire to uplift "these" women from their plight.
2. Organise a fund raiser. Asim's "more money than they know where to burn them" friends could actually be of some use than a waste of oxygen.
3. I am a poor sod but still I'll pledge $2 for every dollar pledged -to a womens NGO in INDIA- by any of these monkeys here who would want people to believe they are actually concerned over the issue.

THL

It's not? When did that happen? There goes all the posts I had planned!!



Seriously now. If there are so many (thousands) of these women and they know it, why do they not join forces and leave?

Where did that immigration thread go?-They can come here to the US.

__________________
"To dream of the person you would like to be is to waste the person you are."-Sholem Asch

"I always turn to the sports page first, which records people's accomplishments. The front page has nothing but man's failures."-Earl Warren

"I didn't intend for this to take on a political tone. I'm just here for the drugs."-Nancy Reagan, when asked a political question at a "Just Say No" rally

"He no play-a da game, he no make-a da rules."-Earl Butz, on the Pope's attitude toward birth control

Gautam

Hats off

I will pledge the same but raise the amount to 4£ for every 1$ pledged by the either Plat or Asim.

Vaman

THL,
which women are you talking about?
I assume not the oone in the article..

THL

Well I was ...until now



No really? Are the women that brain washed that they cannot group together and walk out? What would happen? Thousands cannot ALL be killed.



(yes I am serious and no I am not naive enough to think that all women of the world are mentally able to do this. But I do not understand why together they cannot be stronger)

Vaman

One, I believe these are isolated events and not even to the scale that is made out to be. But given such a large population and some segments of the society being in abject poverty these can happen. It isnt a surprise to me.

Second, because of the geographic distance it may not be possible for the women to band together. However, there are women groups and NGOs who are already working on the issue whatever the scale of the problem. Some of the womens groups are the strongest lobbyists I have seen .

Third, there are no right answers to the issue. Its like saying prostitution and pornography is bad but it still exists in the richest nations in a significant scale.

Jay

Trafficking women against their will happens all over the world. From Japan to America, from Turkey to Germany to UK.

Like it or not Lahori Pa Jee, in South Asia Pakistan is an important center for trafficking women. India and Pakistan are 2 important destinations for Women from Bangladesh, Nepal and Srilanka and most end up in brothels.

So get off the moral highground, aight? I dont think you guys are gonna say this discussion is strictly about Indian women, coz all of them are equal. What are you going to do about it?? Its an organized crime not like your mom and pop shop around the corner. The governments has been taking actions against the crime, but you can only do so much.

Since you already posted about India, lets see a look at other countries around the world.
http://www.catwinternational.org/factbook/Pakistan.php

__________________
A grain of wheat eclipsed the sun of Adam !!

Ray