What comes to your mind when you hear word “dowry”? If you are from Indo-pacific region then you surely know. If you don’t know let me explain
Dowry is wealth given by bride’s family to groom in typical Indian arrange marriage along with their lovely daughter .
Surely it’s a bad custom which still exist in India despite of strict laws against it. It have reduced due to love marriages but it is still there. Dowry is taken in name of gift. In arrange marriage groom’s family are more worried about worth of their son. If groom is having government job then he is more valuable than private job employee. Groom’s worth varies from 20 lakhs to crores obviously more than his self-respect.
But have you heard about reverse of it?
If you are coming from Rajasthan , Haryana or few parts of Gujrat then you might have. Problem started due to less sex ratio. According to 2011 census
Haryana have 879 females over 1000 males whereas Rajasthan has 928 over 1000 males
Now every family wants to marry their daughter to some financially stable family. So in rural areas of these state where education status is bad for boys as well. No one wants to give their daughter to such less earning man.
To tackle this problem internally these society came up with two solution which are also bad
- Saata - baata ( Cross marriages ) : Suppose if you are a parent of a daughter and son and you are looking for their partner. Then you will look for a suitable family ( Obviously in your own caste ,it’s hard to do inter-caste marriages) where you can marry your daughter and bring their daughter as your daughter-in-law. So now you don’t have to worry about marriage of your son if he earns or not.
It is too bad custom reason is if one marriage fails then both marriages automatically get fail. Or if you want divorce but by thinking of your sibling you sacrifice yourself in that toxic marriage. In such cases it ruins life of two family.
2. Bribe to Bride’s family ( reverse of dowry ): If you are father of of son who does not earn that well but problem is you don’t have daughter as well for saata-baata. Then you lure some family with your money so that they can marry their daughter to your son. In such cases groom’s family take care of all the expenses of marriages as well as it gives financial help to bride’s family till she have her first baby. In this cases family gives almost lakhs of rupees to bride’s family.
These two problem mainly occurred mainly in economically poor societies. You can observe these customs in western Rajasthan, few parts of Gujrat.
Example of saata-bata is shown in Jayeshbhai Jordaar movie done by Ranveer singh.
Solutions
Education
Education for both males and females. If girls get educated and became financially independent they will not go for these bad custom. If boys get financially independent then don’t have to worry about their marriage. Surely there will be a girl for him.
To eliminate root cause , if future generation is well educated then they will not differentiate between their son and daughter. Gradually sex ratio will improve.
