India Dishonoured: Behind a Nation's War on Women Read Online Free PDF Page A

to this problem are factors such as urbanisation – the economic reforms of the 90s enticed a large number of young, unmarried men to big cities to look for jobs. Many of these men know little about interacting with the opposite sex since they come from more conservative village environments. Sociologists say young unattached males are more likely than others to congregate in groups and as a result, become more willing to engage in unusual risky behaviour. This phenomenon is frequently described as ‘risky shift’ or ‘group polarisation’ – the tendency to make more extreme decisions in a group as opposed to those made alone.
    In 2005, two Harvard academics, Professor Valerie Hudson and Andrea Boer, wrote in an academic paper 2 Harvard Asia Pacific Review, 2005 http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~hapr/winter07_gov/hudson.pdf that such sex imbalances could create dangerous conditions. Societies where the sex ratio is imbalanced will face increasing social problems such as increased crime rates, drug use, alcoholism, smuggling, trafficking, and prostitution. They said. “We are also likely to see the development of a cattle market for women, not only domestically but also internationally, with women not only kidnapped within the country, but also trafficked from border nations.”
    States with a higher sex imbalance have higher rates of crime and alcoholism than states with a more balanced ratio such as Kerala. A report by the National Commission for Women found that reported dowry deaths in Punjab rose from 51 to 187 over 1991 to 2000, while reported rapes went from 34 to 310 cases - an increase of 812%. To some degree, the rise in numbers reflects increased reporting by victims, but even the NCRB accepts that they are only the tip of an iceberg.
    The scarcity of women, rather than leading to them being more valued, has actually made life more difficult for them. Dr. Vibhuti Patel from the University of Mumbai wrote in 2006: “The society that treats women as mere sex and reproduction object will not treat women in a more humane way if they are merely scarce in supply. On the contrary, there will be increased incidences of rapes, abduction and forced polyandry.” 3 Sex-Selective Abortion in India (2006)
    Ranjana Kumari, director at the Delhi-based NGO, Center for Social Research, told the Global Post in 2009: “[Young men] are not able to find brides, so they are going outside the state and establishing relationships with people of totally different cultures. One girl committed suicide because she was feeling very harassed because she didn’t understand the language or the culture, and the food was different. It’s not easy for a Kerala girl [a southern state] to come to Haryana [in the north].”
    In 2011, a south Indian news site reported that girls as young as 14 and 15 were being kidnapped and trafficked to areas where men wanted to buy them as wives. 4 ‘Many more Panchalis even now, as wife swapping is on the rise’ EnMalyalam.com, 2011 The increasingly skewed sex ratio was leading to rising incidents of rape, human trafficking and ‘wife-swapping’:
    Women from other regions such as the states of Jharkhand and West Bengal are being bought for sums of as little as 15,000 rupees [$300 / £197] by middle-men and brought to a different place to wed into a different culture, language and way of life. In almost [sic] villages there are at least five or six bachelors who can’t find a wife. And, families with three or four unmarried men is [sic] not uncommon.
    North India has become awash with stories of men having to pay to ‘import’ brides from other parts of the country to have children. The NCRB recorded 35,565 instances of women being kidnapped or abducted over 2011.
    The statistics clearly show that the jump in violence against women, especially rape, has outpaced even other crimes. Since 1971, when rape cases were first recorded officially, they have increased by 678%.

    There is another side effect: the