[IMC-Editorial] [India Thinkers Net] The Dowry System

Thu Oct 9 21:46:04 PDT 2003

>From CBSnews. com, television show "60 Minutes" in the USA at http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/10/03/60minutes/
main576466.shtml

For Love Of Money

Aired Oct. 5, 2003

(CBS) In most of the world, Nisha Sharma would be considered quite 
a catch. She's young, pretty and intelligent - someone any young 
man would be proud to marry.Her only problem is that she lives in 
India where a woman is generally acceptable a s a bride only if 
her parents offer the groom's family a sizable bribe, otherwise 
known as a dowry. It can cost her family as much as $100,000.
Worse than that, thousands of women in India after the marriage
have been murdered if they can't pay extortionate demands that 
often come from their husband's family.

Demanding a dowry has been illegal in India for more than 40 
years, but the tradition is so entrenched, almost no one defies 
it. Correspondent Christiane Amanpour reports.

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Nisha Sharma is a 21-year-old college student studying computer 
programming in New Delhi. Before her wedding day earlier this 
year, her father made a deal with the groom's family. Like most 
in India, her marriage to a computer instructor was arranged.

"I thought he's really hard working, smart guy, best for me," says 
Nisha.

Nisha's father, who owns a car battery factory, found the groom 
by placing an ad in the local paper. He negotiated Nisha's dowry 
with the groom's family, and says they insisted he give them 
two sets of appliances - one for the new couple and one for the 
groom's brother.

Her father saved for ten years to pay for the car, the reception, 
and even the wedding video. But it still wasn't enough. Flower 
girls were already welcoming the groom, along with 1,500 
guests when the groom's mother made a last minute  demand. 
Nisha's father said she asked for another $25,000 in cash.

When Nisha's father refused to pay, the wedding video captured 
a shoving match between the two families. That's when Nisha 
made a split second decision  that changed her life forever.

"I called the police and I said I don't want to marry that guy," 
says Nisha. "Because  that time I was thinking they don't came 
to marry with me, they just came to marry with the money."

The police arrested Nisha's would-be husband, and her story 
caused an immediate  sensation. But instead of being ostracized, 
Nisha became a national hero, a poster girl for all those fighting 
to rid India of dowry abuse.

And it wasn't just the activists saluting her. Nisha started 
getting support and even  love letters and marriage proposals 
from people all over India.

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Now, Nisha may even become India's new super hero in a soon to 
be released  action comic book.

It's all been a bit overwhelming, admits Nisha: "It's too much for 
me because I'm so  small and fame is so big."

But her battle is an uphill struggle because in today's consumer 
oriented India, lavish  weddings and huge dowries have become 
the norm. Complete with parades of  elephants and carriages fit 
for a king and queen, it's a way for the bride's family to show
off their wealth and status and buy the most eligible groom.

By speaking out and breaking the silence that surrounds dowry, 
Nisha has inspired  other young women to ditch their greedy 
grooms. And that's good news for women's  rights activist 
Ranjana Kumari, who has been fighting against this tradition 
for more  than 20 years.

"I can't go because I have seen what happens when dowry 
is taken and given, and the kind of cases that come to our 
centers and the kind of tortures and harassment that our girls 
go through," says Ranjana, who refuses to attend a wedding 
in India. "You see, [a] dowry is not one time deal in Indian 
marriages. If he's setting up  a business, he will start putting 
pressure on the wife, get money from your family.  If he has 
to buy a car, it's easy money, it's money you can extract from 
the girl's family."

Ranjana says it's extortion.

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A wing of Delhi's maximum-security prison is reserved exclusively
for mothers-in-law and their accomplices. All of them have 
been either convicted or accused of  dowry-related crimes. Police 
here report that nearly 7,000 women are murdered every year, 
and human rights groups report that the number could be as 
high as 25,000. All of the women have been killed by greedy 
husbands and mothers-in-law trying to squeeze more money 
out of the young brides.

To avoid crushing debts that go with marriage, many Indian 
families are now aborting all their girl babies.

"Certainly there is a link. You see, the parents who think about 
the economic burden that they will carry, it is sometimes ten 
times more than their income, life income," says Ranjana. 
"And if it is a female child, female fetus, abort it."

The problem escalated when women were able to tell the sex 
of their unborn child at cheap ultrasound clinics. Now, so many 
girls have been aborted that it's causing a dangerous population 
imbalance.

It's gotten so bad that the Indian Government has banned 
pre-natal sex determination tests. But that has only driven 
them underground, as Dr. Reicha Tanwar discovered.

"We've had a number of sessions with a number of gynecologists, 
radiologists," says Dr. Tanwar. "And even though they know it's 
legally banned, they have gone on record by saying that they 
have had cases of women come to their clinics - one single 
person, come to their clinics seven or eight times, to get an 
abortion done because it was a female child."

But what really shocked Dr. Tanwar is the latest census figures 
in her state, which now show that almost twice as many boys 
as girls are being born among the better off and literate.

Across the country in Bombay, doctors Anarood and Angeli 
Malpani run an IVF clinic. One of the only ones in the world, 
that pre-selected embryos to guarantee the birth of a boy. 
But that too has been declared illegal, much to Dr. Malpani's 
disgust.

"I think it's perfectly ethical and acceptable to use the technology. 
I think it's actually unethical not to use it and to let someone 
else sit in judgment and say no because you're an Indian couple 
you should not be allowed to have a boy. The whole point of 
living in a democracy is that you allow individuals to make 
decisions for themselves," says Dr. Anarood Malpani.

"My point is that you're effectively saying I am the right 
person to make that decision, and that particular individual 
is too stupid to make that decision for herself."

But the shortage of girls is already causing problems, says 
Dr. Tanwar: "When these children come of marriageable age 
they are not going to find girls for marriage, and life for a girl 
is going to be very difficult. They are going to be kidnapped, 
raped, picked up, sold, bought. I fear to think what will 
happen if this goes on."

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Some of those fears are already being realized in one village 
in northern India.Hundreds of men there aren't married and 
can't find wives to marry.

"It's a very alarming situation, because if we can't control this 
now, the crisis will spread to all of India," says Bhushan Das, 
the village's Hindu priest. "Without women, our world will come 
to an end."

But the only way that will change is if the dowry custom is 
eliminated first, and that's why Nisha's story has hit such a 
nerve here.

"I want to become a symbol for the girls," says Nisha. "Dowry is 
a black spot on our country or I can say on the earth."

"In our part of the country, people grieve when a daughter is born
in the family. There is no celebration," says Dr. Tanwar. "It is 
these girls, these kind of cases, which are going to encourage 
others to emulate it, and put a stop to it. If girls themselves put 
their foot down, maybe some change would come. What is the 
other way? I don't see any other way."

CBS

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