BOTH China and India have recently been in the global eye for their adverse sex ratios. China’s one-child policy has landed it in dire straits with almost 19 extra boys for every girl with the future implication that there would be close to 30 million excess males by 2020. India is in somewhat better shape with around 13 extra boys per girl. While India’s overall figure of excess males in the marriage market would not be quite as worrisome as China’s, the concentration of these males in the North and northwestern regions of India raises similar concerns. Thus in 2011, in the states of Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan, 76% of males between the ages of 20 and 24 were unmarried in comparison with 34% unmarried females (Census 2011 figures).

As is well known, these states of India (including Gujarat) have long histories of daughter elimination resulting in skewed sex ratios in the region. In the old days, this was achieved by practicing female infanticide or fatally neglecting girl children. The preference for male children ensured that missing girls were not a cause for concern to most families and to society at large. Although the Sikh religion banned the practice of ‘kudi-maar’ (daughter killing) as far back as the time of the first Guru, Nanak, the ban did not have much effect and the practice continued unabated.

During the colonial period the British seized on the practice of female infanticide as yet another proof of why their civilizing mission was needed – to rescue Indian women from its barbaric practices. While the British put down the anti-daughter proclivity of Indians to ‘pride’ and ‘purse’, scholars of colonial and post-colonial India have argued that honour and dowry were not the primary or only reasons for deselecting daughters. A desire to balance mouths in relation to resources and the need to reduce claimants to land and prevent its fragmentation were other key factors. While fewer daughters meant fewer dowries, fewer women meant wives would have to be shared and result in fewer offspring.

 

In the last several decades of modern India, a precipitous decline in the number of girls has been effected by the introduction, rapid spread and use of new sex determination technologies, foremost among which is the ultrasound. A machine which was meant to detect foetal abnormalities such as the Down syndrome has instead turned into a killer of daughters. So much so that in 1994 India was forced to bring in a law (the PCPNDT Act) to rein in the use of sex determination and sex selection technologies.

Yet, new technologies appear faster than they can be controlled. Today, one can use sperm sorters to ensure a male conception and other new reproductive technologies like IVF (In vitro fertilization) enable doctors to cultivate and implant male embryos. Even those looking for surrogate births can manage to fulfil their desire for male children. However, it would be foolish to blame technology for the choices and desires it enables. Some activists have laid the blame for the deteriorating sex ratios squarely at the door of capitalist firms like GE, which according to them produce and sell ultrasound machines to greedy and unscrupulous Indian medical practitioners who cash in on our insatiable desire for sons.

 

Certain other patterns around sex selection reveal that we have to anchor the current phase of ‘daughter dislike’ in new societal compulsions which continue to make it more attractive for parents to have sons rather than daughters. Thus, curiously, the gender imbalance is worse in prosperous states such as Haryana, Punjab and Gujarat and in rich cities like Delhi, Chandigarh, Ahmedabad and Mumbai. In Uttar Pradesh, the richer western area has a worse sex ratio than the poorer eastern region. In recent decades, rich states such as Maharashtra are also turning to sex selection.

Further, this trend is also seen at the level of classes and castes. Research reveals that families with higher incomes are more likely to sex select. Women with more education are much more likely to sex select than those with no education. Both rural and urban propertied castes also tend to prefer sons as a strategy to keep property in the family. Earlier, lower castes had better sex ratios but now some of the worst sex ratios in states like Haryana are found among urban Scheduled Castes. As their economic circumstances improve, these castes favour both smaller families and boys over girls.

 

The association between relative prosperity and sex selection raises some fundamental questions about how our model of development ties in with goals of gender equality. The expectation that gender equality would improve as societies developed economically and people became more prosperous is belied by the trend of sex ratios in India. It has been shown by demographers like Monica Das Gupta and P.N. Mari-Bhat that in ‘son-preference’ societies, as people become prosperous their desire for a large family declines faster than their son preference. Thus fertility decline, which in many ways empowers women allowing them to pursue roles other than those of childbearing and rearing, might lead to a reduction in the number of daughters being born. However, there is no intrinsic relationship between fertility decline and deterioration of sex ratios as the case of southern India shows. It is also seen that different stages of fertility decline result in improvement or deterioration in the sex ratio.

My current research shows that upwardly mobile families from the middle and lower rungs of the middle class are most prone to not having daughters even as they reduce the size of their families. But once these same families are secure in the middle class they stop sex selecting and discriminating between girls and boys.

Despite the class pattern discussed above, the desire for male progeny (notwithstanding increasing disappointment with grown sons) in states like Punjab is such that even relatively elderly couples past their child bearing age are willing to try new technologies such as In vitro fertilization in order to obtain male children. Punjabi couples from the UK and Canada often travel to India to fulfil their desire for male children. The lure of continuing the male line and bequeathing property to sons survives even across continents.

 

Sex selection has thus resulted in an overall masculinization of society. Currently, India’s overall sex ratio stands at 943 women to 1000 men while the child sex ratio stands at 919. Missing women have various implications for a society. Households become more masculine – some might be sister-less, others might have one or more unmarried brothers. Apart from the sex-based discrimination and gender bias that eliminating or not wanting daughters implies, the possible deleterious effects of too many men in society have been raised by several scholars.

In a book published in 2004 – coinciding unintentionally with the year in which the Indian SRB (sex ratio at birth) was the worst ever – the authors, Hudson and den Boer argue that the excess of bachelors in populous countries like China and India might spell grave consequences for the world.¹ They predict greater military adventurism on China’s part, more communal conflict in India and a rise in crime (especially crime against women) and social unrest in both countries. They set their predictions against a historically witnessed narrative of unrest and violence in eras with surplus men. The book, however, does not pay much attention to the sorts of changes already taking place in affected areas in India – changes that are challenging extant social arrangements around marriage and its control by older generations. These challenges often end up in great violence – murder of women and of young couples, often termed as ‘honour killings’.

 

Speculated effects of the sex ratio imbalance revolve around the possible negative consequences of too many men in society. A key effect of the skewed sex ratio is what demographers call a ‘male marriage squeeze’, implying a shortage of brides and therefore an excess of bachelors in society.

In China, bachelors are referred to as ‘bare branches’ – men who will not be able to marry and bear children or have families of their own. In Punjab, bachelors are termed as chhada and in Haryana as malang, with these terms carrying a negative connotation. Given India’s culture of compulsory marriage, bachelors are often considered incomplete individuals and are pitied although not necessarily feared. Generally, such bachelorhood is rarely out of choice.

In recent times, the question of unmarried males has taken centre-stage in the public and political discourse in at least one state – Haryana. Politicians campaigning during elections have been told that they would get votes only if they found brides for the large numbers of bachelors – the popular slogan being ‘bahu dilao, vote pao’! Groups of unmarried young men have banded together to set up organizations such as Kunwara Union and Avivahit Purush Sangathan (unmarried men’s association) to bring attention to their predicament.

In Punjab, another suffering state, the demand for brides is less acute due to widespread alcohol and drug addiction of marriageable males who as a result are ruling themselves out of the marriage market. The more than decade old spate of honour killings in Haryana and western UP, and the related khap activism, can also be linked to the acute shortage of brides. As the marriage market tightens, groups seek to control women available for marriage and to prevent them from being poached by others who do not have a traditional ‘right’ over them.

 

All five states have witnessed various changes in marriage practices as they scramble to tackle bride shortages. Bride import taking the form of marriage migration of women from distant and culturally different states has been documented in several studies.² Women are brought from poorer states of West Bengal, Assam and Bihar to marry men in Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Gujarat and even Kashmir. The men they marry might be much older than them or might be widowers with children. Increasingly, younger men with lesser prospects are bringing their brides from afar. For many, this is the only route to getting married and setting up their own homes.

As Indians shift from joint to nuclear family living, not having a wife creates many difficulties for men who remain embedded in a traditional division of labour where household and care work remains women’s work, ideally the wife’s. Elderly mothers of bachelors exhort them to acquire cross-region brides so that they can be relieved of the burden of looking after the house-hold and instead be taken care of.

Such cross-region marriage migration unites couples who often do not share language, region, caste, religion and major cultural norms. Thus, a bride from Kerala could not face a more different cultural environment than the harsh patriarchy characterizing a state like Haryana, in contrast to the relatively more gender equal system of her natal state. Wives from other states also face an uphill task in acclimatization and acceptance in local society. Many are unable to adjust and run away.

While the vast majority of women come through what might be called ‘chain marriage migration’ – women following their sisters, cousins and co-villagers, and a substantial number settle down with their husbands, some have been trafficked against their will. Some NGOs have been ‘rescuing’ such brides and restoring them back to their states. Some brides have faced what is called the ‘Draupadi Syndrome’, being forced to cohabit with several brothers. In their early years, brides might be confined to the home and placed under strict surveillance to prevent them from running away. The argument is that they have been ‘bought’ and are hence the property of the men and the families who have bought them – a deeply patriarchal perspective that considers women as the property of husbands.

 

I have suggested that these mixed marriages might have unintended and perhaps positive social consequences in the long run. In many ways these marriages challenge the deeply patriarchal nature of North Indian society. They violate norms of endogamy (marriage within caste) and go against the tradition of dowry. All such marriages are dowry-less with the men bearing the burden of marriage expenses. These marriages also break down regional confinements and it is possible that over a longer span the culture of the bride’s region might make some inroads into that of her husband’s. In the short run, however, the ‘imported’ women and their children might face discrimination in daily life and conflicts over inheritance of property and other issues.

The marriage crisis in the North-northwest is exacerbated by shifts and changes in the rural economy, in fertility patterns, in matchmaking criteria and in gender indicators. As farming has become more mechanized and younger generations of males have acquired some education, the turn has been away from agriculture and towards salaried or ‘service’ employment. However, the desire for salaried employment, especially government employment, often remains a distant dream with the lack of expansion in such jobs. With the ‘jobless growth’ scenario post the 1990s, many males remain underemployed. Rural propertied males wander around looking for ‘service’ jobs while the older generation continues to hold the reins of agriculture. Jobs, indeed, are becoming essential for males to become marriageable. In the past, while owning land was sufficient to establish a man’s credentials for making a suitable marriage, it is no longer so. Education and service employment have become crucial to finding brides in an increasingly tight marriage market. As a result the brunt of the marriage squeeze falls on poorer and less educated males.

 

The marriage squeeze is leading rigidly patriarchal societies such as Haryana to relax rules which prevent individuals from specific gotras from intermarrying. Rules of village and territorial exogamy (prohibition on marriage within the village and within the area dominated by a particular khap) which distort the marriage market are weakening. Recently, a prominent Haryana khap, the Satrol Khap, openly declared that it was relaxing several restrictive rules. Their move met with some opposition which now seems to have died down in the face of acute shortage of brides.

The violation of age-old community norms of who can marry whom has not been without violence and bloodshed though. I have argued that the recent rise in khap activism and honour killings is related to the shortage of brides in Haryana, Punjab and western UP. Khaps have been passing strictures against families and couples who breach traditional marriage rules. Interestingly, not all the marriages that the khaps oppose are self-choice or runaway marriages. Many have been arranged by parents who match-make on grounds of modern criteria such as education, profession and income.

Khap actions such as fining families, prohibiting couples from entering their villages and tacit support to violence against ‘erring’ couples have created a fair amount of tension and social disruption in Haryana and western UP. Additionally, the khaps in Haryana have been agitating for a change in the Hindu Marriage Act to ban sagotra (within one’s own gotra) marriages. Such actions spell a desperation on the part of a society losing hold over important dimensions of social life – marriage and control over younger generations. Khap activism is evidence of resistance and opposition to change as these traditional bodies are fast losing their hold and relevance in contemporary society. It is also an assertion of masculinity by old men and young unemployed and unmarried men, as Prem Chowdhry, a scholar of Haryana, asserts.

 

Lacking khaps, Punjab is dealing with its bride shortages through import of brides as discussed above, but is also witnessing an epidemic of runaway marriages. These marriages are generally inter-caste often involving men from Dalit castes and women from Jat castes. A study of inter-caste marriages based on NFHS data shows that of the 22% women with inter-caste marriages, around 12% married men of a ‘lower’ caste status and 10% married men of a ‘higher’ caste status than their own.³ The study also showed a significantly higher number of inter-caste marriages in Punjab (23%) compared to the all-India average of 10% and to the neighbouring state of Haryana (17%). Inter-caste intimacy and marriage are leading to an increase in honour killings in Punjab despite the absence of khap-like bodies. Caste tensions, already in process due to the economic rise of many Dalit communities, are being exacerbated by such marriages and intimacies.

 

The link between too many men, too few women and an increase in crime, especially crime against women, has yet to be rigorously explored. On the face of it, the greater reporting of sexual harassment and forms of sexual violence makes it appear as if the desperation of too many unemployed, unmarried men is at the root of it. Societies in which bachelorhood is not easily accepted and occupies an inferior status, bachelors may be seen as maladjusted and a potential threat to social order. Talking about Haryana, Prem Chowdhry says, ‘The unemployed and single men of Haryana provide the raw material for all the agitations in the state.’⁴

As roles such as breadwinning, fathering children, and exercising control and power over wives and other junior family members remain at the heart of a thriving patriarchy in these states, any challenge to achieving these roles can easily translate into insecurities which might result in anti-social behaviour of various sorts. Thus, young, unmarried men are often considered at the root of much mischief in society, whether it is sexual harassment of women or crime and theft or participation in agitations and protests. Studies in China by Lena Edlund⁵ show a doubling of crime over two decades correlated to adverse sex ratios. Dreze and Khera⁶ show a correlation between higher homicide rates and adverse sex ratios in India. Philip Oldenburg⁷ had long ago pointed to the high levels of violence in northern states and dubbed it India’s ‘Bermuda Triangle’ where girls disappeared. Does a demographic scenario of fewer women and more men thus actually pose a threat to social order? Will involuntary bachelors indulge in negative behaviour? Some studies from China show that such men have low self-esteem and are inclined to depression but there is not much evidence that they are prone to aggression and violence.

 

In India, it is a more worrisome combination of involuntary bachelorhood and unemployment that makes for a volatile combination which might be at the root of socially disruptive behaviour. There is a large body of anecdotal evidence of such men being deployed in large numbers in political rallies, joining fringe communitarian movements or lending support to conservative and communal causes. Being involved in such activities provides them with a sense of empowerment in the face of a threatened normative masculinity. More research is needed to explore ways in which the crisis stemming from female adverse sex ratios and a surplus of bachelors can be handled and diffused.

 

Footnotes:

1. Valerie Hudson and Andrea den Boer, Bare Branches: The Security Implications of Asia’s Surplus Male Population. MIT Press, Cambridge, 2004.

2. Ravinder Kaur, ‘Mapping the Adverse Consequences of Sex Selection and Gender Imbalance in India and China’, Economic and Political Weekly 48(35), 31 August 2013.

3. Kumudini Das, T.K. Roy, P.K. Tripathy, K.C. Das and Vandana Gautam, ‘Inter-Caste Marriages in India: Has It Really Changed Over Time?’ 2010. Conference paper available at http://paa2010.princeton.edu/download.aspx?submissionId=100801

4. Prem Chowdhry, ‘Men, Marriage and Sexuality in Northern India’ in Samita Sen, Ranjita Biswas and Nandita Dhawan (eds.), Intimate Others: Marriage and Sexualities in India. Stree, Kolkota, 2011.

5. Lena Edlund, Hongbin Li, Junjian Yi and Junsen Zhang, ‘Sex Ratios and Crime: Evidence from China’s One-Child Policy.’ IZA Discussion Paper No 3214, December 2007.

6. Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera, ‘Crime, Gender, and Society in India: Insights from Homicide Data’, Population and Development Review 26(2), 2000, pp. 335-52.

7. Philip Oldenburg, ‘Sex Ratio, Son Preference and Violence in India, A Research Note’, Economic and Political Weekly 27(49-50), 1992, pp. 2657-62.