Female feticide and bride buying in India

Renu Agal:

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.

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

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