India 'dowry deaths' still rising despite modernization

[Jesus Malverde]

Crime statistics and a Gender Scorecard compiled by women's rights activists have put chilling new perspective on an age-old social ill in India: Bride-burning and other "dowry crimes" take the life of a woman every hour.

Despite a rapidly expanding middle class, enviable economic growth and measurable strides in modernization since India's 1947 independence, dowry deaths continue to rise year on year, as does the related plague of "cruelty by husband and relatives" -- the crime defined as torture committed against women in pursuit of more marriage bounty from their parents.

India's National Crime Records Bureau last week reported that 8,233 Indian women were killed in 2012 in dowry-related violence, or nearly one per hour. The incidence of dowry deaths grew by nearly 3% over the previous five years, and torture at the hands of a husband or family increased by 5.4%, with 99,135 cases reported by survivors in 2011.

The scope of the problems is likely to be wider than the statistics suggest, as many women and their parents are reluctant to seek prosecution for fear of scandal that would destroy their other daughters' chances of getting married, analysts say.

http://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-india-dowry-deaths-20130904,0,7340130.story

[Jesus Malverde]

1. Why the killings..

The expected value of the dowry has risen in some cultures in recent decades. This phenomenon has led to a sharp increase in "dowry deaths" since the 1980s. A "dowry killing" occurs when a new wife is murdered by her husband or in-laws if they are unhappy with her, rather than sending her back to her parents, which would force the in-laws to return the dowry to the bride's parents. Statistics in India show that 90% of such murdered brides were educated, 30% were graduates, and 20% were women who worked outside the home and contributed to the family financially. Dowry killings have been described by women's rights groups as a problem that is typically among the "emergent urban middle class", who aspire to greater material prosperity, and the dowry that comes with a wife is viewed as a means of obtaining money and consumer goods.[68]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowry

[BainsBane]

2. From the LA Times article

Despite being outlawed in 1962, demand for dowries continues and has even increased in recent decades.

"What has happened in the last 25-30 years as India has become much more conscious of material possessions is that it has come back with a vengeance," she said of the fatal abuses. "You have dowry demands for things like a refrigerator or a motor scooter. It's no longer about jewelry or things a woman could hold on to as her own."

For centuries tradition dictated that the bride's family provide her with gold, jewelry and a trousseau as she left her parental home to live with her in-laws, a way of ensuring her a degree of economic security, said Desai.

In many ways modernization has made the problem worse, she noted. Online dating services in India make it easier for parents to check out the social and economic status of potential spouses for their children and vet their preferred candidates before the prospective couples even meet. . .

Ranjana Kumari, another women's rights activist, laid the blame for barbaric attacks on young brides to a "culture of greed" that pervades all levels of Indian society.

[Recursion]

3. Yep

Sigh.

We're working with some NGOs here on this, but it's one of those things that as a foreigner sometimes the worst thing you can do is be seen taking the lead on a subject -- people get all defensive.

Take where I live, Mumbai: it's pretty liberal and cosmopolitan as these things go, but 500 people move here every single day, most of them from small villages in western India; they still have very pre-industrial ideas about things and are moving straight into a post-industrial city. I wish I knew a simple answer.

[hfojvt]

4. 500 people a day?

You mean the city's population is increasing by 180,000 people a year?

That sounds positively awful.

Although I guess a city of 18.4 million people is not going to notice much an increase of a mere .2 million more. That's barely 1%.

But still - yuck. That's almost 3 times the population of the county where I live. I cannot imagine this county almost quadrupling in size in a mere year. That's almost like living in Dublin, Ireland where it's doublin' all the time.

[Recursion]

5. Yes. The prediction is 30 million in the city proper by 2030

Mumbai should be the largest city in the world in about a decade if current trends continue.

It is awful. The slums that were famous a decade ago like Dharavi actually have waiting lists now because so many migrants have moved here and just pitch tents on the sidewalks in Parel or the northern districts. (The slums are technically illegal, but have a semi-tolerated status in the city and some basic services are provided by various criminal organizations, but you have to wait in line to move there and get those services.)

[emsimon33]

6. Of all the places on earth that I have visited and lived in...India is the worse

I have traveled A LOT and lived in several countries and I can only urge people NOT to bother to visit India. It is nothing short of a hell hole that treats women much worse than any Muslim country I have ever visited. "Slum Dog Millionaire" does a good job of showing the filth, the corruption, and the violence; whereas, "The Most Exotic Marigold Hotel" romanticizes the country. It is a dark, dark place filled with many wonderful people but filthy, corrupt, and violent beyond belief.

[Surya Gayatri]

7. Have you ever read "A Passage to India" by E. M. Forster?

Such a just and poignant evocation of the sublime, but flawed humanity, the prosaic, but exalted spirtuality of the sub-continent.

The India I've come to know through multiple visits and stays over 20 years, is far more complex than the two dimensonal picture you paint.

[emsimon33]

8. Actually, I have the Kindle version of Passage to India but haven't read it yet

I have traveled and lived all over the world. We were filming a documentary in India under the sponsorship of a very wealthy Indian person who, it turns out when we looked deeper, bilked people of billions of dollars using shell corporations. Because he is of the highest caste in India and has political connections, he and his brother never went to prison but the 20+ shell companies were delisted from India's stock exchange.

The documentary we were filming was the making of a film about how education is a powerful force for changing the lives of young women from backgrounds where there would be little hope otherwise. The documentary and what we filmed was to be up-lifting and positive; however, the wealthy billionaire must have thought that we uncovered other unsavory business that we now know from our CIA he is behind (We were unaware of any of his corrupt background or that of his guru, Sai Baba--accused of raping and then murdering young boys but considered a "treasure" in India!!!!!). The Indian billionaire threatened to "disappear" the members of the documentary crew (the Indians working on the film assured us that he had the power0.

He had the guards (armed by the way) at his university where we were filming detain us forcibly (we were in Haryana near Kaithal). We later learned that had it not been a major national religious holiday in India with the courts closed, he could have kept us in the country where our lives were in serious danger.

One thing we had working in our favor was that members of the documentary crew were very well connected politically in the U.S. which the corrupt billionaire did not realize: One crew member's husband's boss (to whom he is a direct report) reports directly to the president of the US (Obama), one's sister was a major person on Hillary Clinton's (then secretary of state) presidential campaign, one lives on on a huge estate in LA owned by a personal friend of David Petraeus (then head of the CIA), one is the daughter of a NFL football coach, etc. However, this occurred right before the 2012 November election and the president did not need an international incident.

When the American Embassy called the Indian billionaire to request that we be released, the billionaire said, "I am _____. Look me up in Google" and hung up the phone!

There is much more to this story. The American embassy finally got us released and out of the country immediately. I mention all this because it has colored my view of India. I met many wonderful people but the level of corruption and the filth was impressive.

It is noteworthy that on the 15 hour flight from New Delhi to Newark, I spoke with many others who had spent various lengths of time in India and were leaving the country. Not one said that they would ever return and they, too, had stories of ill treatment and marginalization because they were women as well as noting (both men and women) that they did not feel safe in the country. Many of these, like me, had traveled extensively. Since my time in India last fall, I have traveled to several countries in South America, living in Chile for a while, and then traveling to several European countries this spring and summer. I keep warning people to stay away from India and the response that I get almost unanimously is either that the person or person has never wanted to visit India or they have and would never go back and they also caution people about going.

So, well I appreciate your comment to me, and while I really hate to seem like the bitchy British woman who leaves her husband in India because she can not appreciate the country in The Most Exotic Marigold Hotel, other than so many of the people whom I met while in India, I have nothing positive to say about the country and would caution people about traveling there.

All that said, when I have come across people who loved their experience in India, 99% of the time they were very wealthy and in many cases were being wooed to invest in the country. There is a caste system in India and from my experience it is accepted and enforced much more than I would have ever suspected before traveling there. There is also a level of disrespect for women that I have not encountered in any other country (I have never been to Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, or the Emirates, so there could be worse places.)

Also, did I mention in my earlier post the Times of India article I read while there that reported that only a VERY small percentage of Indians who leave the country to pursue education and technical training ever return to the country. A higher percentage go the poor third world countries than return to India. I figure that that speaks volumes.