Poor Orissa Girls !

The Great Indian Bride Bazaar

Are you not getting married due to over age, unemployment, shortage of girls in your community, bad reputation or poor financial condition, welcome to the Great Indian Bride Bazaar of Orissa where girls of all kind are available on a price.

Spread over a dozen districts of Orissa this ‘market of girls’ operate through network of agents expert in persuading impoverished and innocent parents, who have many daughters to marry off. These agents work in cahoots with local leaders, lodge owners, temple priests and police who facilitate quick marriage of the girls to grooms of a distant land speaking different language.

Amit Jain, 37, a grain merchant of Jhansi, is one such person who could not get married despite his family efforts for last 12 years as the population of girls has gone down drastically in the region. Desperate Amit then headed for Orissa to hunt for a bride copying other young men like him who could not find a match in their own area.

Supported by an agent Jain visited the house of three girls in Orissa out of which all agreed to marry their daughters to him but he chose the good looking girl of a Brahmin family of village Kuranga. The farmer family has five daughters and a son all educated up to 12^th class but did not had money to marry off daughters. The family agreed and decided to give their daughter after verifying the credentials of Jain back in Jhansi.

Over the last one decade Orissa has become a centre for men from central India buying girls for marriage from impoverished families. Every year thousands of Oriya girls are traded as brides by unscrupulous agents to desperate young men. These girls are sold for Rs 20,000 to Rs 40,000 from Sambalpur, Bargarh, Kalahandi, Bolangir, Sundergarh, Jajpur, Koraput, Rayagada, Nuapada and Mayurbhanj districts.

These districts of Orissa are known for sex ratio above national average. In some it even crosses 1000 women per thousand men while the areas where the girls are being sold are infamous for female feticide and infanticide.

Taking advantage of this situation several crooked and deceitful agents on both sides have come up who lure gullible parents to marry-off their girls to males coming for bride hunting here. ‘’These agents paint a very rosy picture of the distant land where the brides would be sent and give examples of families who had sent their daughters’, says Lingaraj a former JNU scholar and a hardcore socialist working in the region on farmer issues.

‘’It all started in early nineties when some Oriya girls who had gone out on seasonal migration came back married. They were bedecked with jewellery and prosperity writ large on their faces. These girls then become role model for others who too married their daughters through the husbands of these girls out of which some acted as touts’’, says Priyaranjan Sahu of Sambalpur.

A former sarpanch of Bargarh Jagdish Panda had five daughters out of which three are married in Bundelkhand. He says, ‘’marrying daughters in Orissa has become a big problem as good grooms are rare and very fussy.’’

Panda even got many of the girls of his relatives married to men in districts of Madhya Pradesh and started running a marriage bureau sort of thing. Every year several men come to him asking for brides while families of girls keep in touch with him to find suitable match for their daughters.

Panda being a politician has social service in his mind and a need to enlarge circle of contacts but not all match-makers cum agents (these agents prefer to call theselves match makers) are good like Panda. Raghunath of Lupur Singa village of Attabirra block of Sambalpur arranged over 3400 marriages through agents in Bundelkhand but had to face tough time later when some of the girls were discovered to have been sold further from their groom’s place. Raghunath was once badly beaten by the people of Bargarh town when he was finalizing one such deal.

While Oriya girls are settling in Hindi heartland Rajesh Tripathi a resident of Tikamgarh district chose to stay in Jayant village in Sambalpur at the house of his in-laws. Tripathi now has become a permanent address for bride-huting groups coming from Bundelkhand.

Similarly there are other agents like Ghina Panda and Mahesh of Bolangir district who regularly supply brides to this huge market from the hinterland of Orissa.

Ranjan Panda, a social activist and head of Manav Adhikar Seva Sangh (MASS) says ‘’migration is common to this area and imbalanced development of the state has further added to the problem. The problem is more evident in poverty pockets of the state as a study pointed that 80 per cent of the target families are landless and 70 per cent of those trafficked are illiterate.’’

Ranjan says ‘’time of hardship is the best season for agents to hunt for bride which is during summer’’.

Shibshankar Nanda of Oriya daily ‘’Dharitri’’ says ‘’there was no tradition of dowry in western Orissa but in the last three decades it has become prevalent forcing poor parents to look for cheaper options like marrying off in distant land.’’

He says ‘’the worst hit by this are the agrarian Brahmins and educated families of other castes who have ruined their farming as they do not get labour for agriculture – due to NREGA and migration – and they themselves can not go and work in fields due to social taboo.’’

To understand the well-knit system of bride-hunting this correspondent accompanied a bride-seeker from Bundelkhand to Bargarh in Orissa in Utkal Express to alight at Jharsuguda railway junction. The agents and the aspiring groom normally travel in general class to evade the prying eyes of police and railway officials who often detain them for questioning and extortion.

The agents exploit Rs 20,000 to Rs 40,000 from the bride-seeker depending upon the bargain. Part money is taken as advance while the remaining is paid at the point of getting bride.

Of this money 40-50 percent is retained by the groom agent while remaining is distributed among the local bride identifier who is usually the relative or neighbor of the bride and the local agent.

Most of the local agents are village leaders or educated unemployed youth or hotel managers or a grocery merchants who fixes the deal with counterpart agents accompanying the groom. The local agent plays an important role in motivating the girl parents and mobilizing local support to get the victim married to the groom in some temple or before a local notary with help of a lawyer.

Lingaraj remembers that every year hundreds of marriages are solemnized in Narsingnath temple under Gandhmardan Hill. He however says that these marriages are not reported or noticed.

Sometimes Rs five to ten thousand are passed off to bride’s family as marriage expenses. However it happens in the cases when bride’s family is extremely poor.

During Orissa tour for bride-hunting a agent carries along numerous grooms and puts them in a dingy lodge to take them one by one to the house of prospective bride so that they can select girl of their choice. The counterpart agent from Orissa keep a list of prospective brides and inform them in advance of arriving party.

Narayan Prasad Sahu owner of New Jyoti Lodge says ‘’police keep a regular vigil on the occupants as most of them are those looking for girls. There have been many cases when agents got two sides of different castes married creating problems later and police cases’’.

Sahu says ‘’people here in Orissa have no option but to marry off their girls due to poverty but now they have become very cautious and find out by visiting the grooms place if all is well’’.

However agents are rarely concerned about the future of the girl or the married life of the couple. They have devised new theories of caste wherein a Jain is treated like a Brahmin while people of backward castes have become ‘banias’ (a trading community). Once the family of the girl okays the boy after seeing him physically the agents are in a hurry to fix the deal to get money.

Agent Tulsi Kumar says ‘’once the marriage is done all of them (couple) adjust to the new life and no body complains after a time’. Tulsi is credited to have arranged over thousand deals and now he plans to start a marriage bureau purely based on Oriya girls.

Tikalal Mishra, a social activist of Parmanpur village of Bargarh says ‘’girls getting married to Hindi region are not happy, many come back with the tales of exploitation and tough life especially if they are married to Chambal region or in some remote village’’.

Those in towns are happy but those living in villages are almost in hell like situation. He tells how his niece was cheated by a Brahmin family by saying that they have huge tracts of land and a house in town but turned out to be paupers.

Mishra says ‘’most of the agents are cheats who take away girls by lying about boys family and then run away’. In village Devahal once such agent and his cronies were beaten by the villagers when they tried to marry a minor girl with an aged groom.

Videshi Mahapatra of Porwadi village in Sambalpur district of Orissa married his daughter Aruna in Bundelkhand of Madhya Pradesh on recommendation of a middleman that his girl would be going to the house of an affluent farmer. Later Aruna discovered that the ‘affluent farmer’ is a petty farm labour without single acre of land. When Aruna raised her voice her husband’s family already living on the verge of penury started abusing her.

Disillusioned Aruna,26, returned to Orissa and filed a complaint with Women Police station in Sambalpur only to realize that she is not alone there are thousands of other women like her who were duped by touts and forced into a marriage of ‘inconvenience’.

But Rasespuri,28, of Bagarh in Orissa who was married to Ajjudi Rajput of Ranital village in Chattarpur (MP) does not want to go back even after the death of her husband due to kidney failure. She has a nine month daughter to look after with nobody in the family except her mother-in-law Chotti Bai.

Not all girls are in troubled water. Asarfi of Kharmanda village of Orissa was married to Kriparam Lodhi of Chattarpur (MP) in 2003 after five years she brought her younger sister Gulabi to be married to brother of her husband. Now the two sisters live happily in the joint family.

The sisters have learnt Bundeli language and observe purdah (veil) tradition of the region. Father in law Santram says ‘’the two Oriya girls are like the local girls they have picked up all our traditions and have become like us’’.

‘’We try to keep these girls like any other dauhter-in-law, since we are already facing shortage of girls in our community and those available do not want to live in our remote villages, we know the importance of being women’’, says Kesri Prasad Richariya, Brahmin farmer who got his brother married in Orissa.

‘’In Bundelkhand region since Brahmins are poor and illiterate living in remote villages with no facilities people rarely marry their daughters to such men hence they have no other option but to get brides from Orissa’, says BJP district president of Chattarpur Pushpendra Nath Pathak.

Mahesh Shukla, a Brahmin, married Kamlini Pani of Dungipali village of Bolangir (Orissa). After five years of her marriage Kamlini is now a ‘Aganwadi Worker’ under women and child welfare department. Another Oriya girl is running a grocery shop in village.

Not only Brahmins, scheduled caste men are also getting brides. Baijanti of Hilliplai of Orissa is married to Ganesh of village Andhiyara in Bundelkhand.

All those who do not get marry collect money and go to Orissa. ‘’Instead of spending money on ceremonies here they give that money to agent who arranges a girl for the man’’, says Virendra Diwedi, a youth Congress leader.

This is a very lucrative deal for the people here who bring woman from Orissa, says Diwedi, a resident of Panna where hundreds of Oriya girls have been married in last few years.

He says ‘’they don’t bring girls here to make them sit in air-conditioned houses instead they treat her as an additional hand in farming thus getting a labor who also satisfies his sex needs’.

If the woman does not adjust to the new environment and resists the hard life there are reports that she was sold to another man. However such cases in Bundelkhand are rarely heard.

Janaki Pateria is one such agent in Chatarpur district who got married over 500 boys and girls. After hearing that thousands of male are getting married to girls of Orissa the Rural Development Minister of Madhya Pradesh Gopal Bhargava told one of such agent in Sagar that he would soon organize an exclusive mass marriage ceremony for the boys marrying in Orissa so that thay can be covered under Mukkhyamantri Kanyadan Yojana wherein couples get around Rs 10,000 as government grant.

Pushpendra Nath Pathak says ‘’since this has become a trend and practice in Bundelkhand this should be institutionalized so that ills could be eradicated from the system’’. Pathak now plans to organize some sort of confederation of the Oriya brides in Bundelkhand so that they can meet each other and share their views.

But this is the bride read bright side of the story, a study done in 2003 by Institute of Social and Economic Development, Bhubaneshwar, points that buyers are not alone from Hindi belt it could also be a chilli farmer or brick kiln owner in Andhra Pradesh, or a brothel owner in the metropolises of Mumbai, Delhi or Calcutta.

Many girls after some years of the marriage if do not adjust to the new family do not return to their parents in Orissa out of social fear but just wander ultimately falling in the trap of sex trade.

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Deepak Tiwari/ Orissa and Bundelkhand

(Some names have been changed to hide the identity of the persons.)