Living: Marriages; Bride Bazaar

Unscrupulous operators run a thriving racket in Bundelkhand fixing matches for local boys with impoverished Oriya girls.

" I didn't get dowry. My father paid to get me a wife."
Kishori Lal, 25
Carpet Weaver
Wife: Gita
From Nayagarh
Two years ago Kishori of Baruasagar village, Jhansi, got in touch with Om Rai, a truck driver and broker, to find him a bride. Rai demanded Rs 10,000 which Kishori's father Chakki Lal paid by mortagaging his land. Now thay have two children.

Sajeevan Kushwaha is 30 years old, illiterate and unemployed -- just the kind of man whom no father would want his daughter to get married to. Last year, Sajeevan's father Gaya Prasad of Sameri village under the Bamaur block in Uttar Pradesh's Jhansi district decided that if no girl from the village was ready to marry his son, he would simply buy him a bride. It wouldn't be too difficult either. He was aware of a racket in which impoverished girls from Orissa were being brought to Bundelkhand to be sold as brides. So he told Thakurdas, a local trader, to get him one such girl. Thakurdas returned a few days later with five girls in tow from whom Sajeevan chose 25-year-old Phoolmani as his bride. A vegetable vendor, Gaya Prasad owned three bighas of land, which he mortgaged to local moneylenders to cough up the Rs 8,000 that Thakurdas demanded. "There was no other way I could have arranged my son's marriage," he says. "I had to pay Thakurdas."

In Bamaur block alone, there are at least 30 girls like Phoolmani brought from coastal districts like Nayagarh in Orissa. Government officials say that in the past six years, at least 1,000 Oriya girls have been sold as brides to different families in 800 villages in Jhansi, Lalitpur, Hamirpur and Mahoba districts in Uttar Pradesh and Tikamgarh, Shivpur, Datia and Sagar in Madhya Pradesh, which together form the Bundelkhand region. It is a racket that has flourished since it first began in the early '90s. But barring a few instances when the girls themselves complained, the police have preferred to turn a blind eye. "The trade in brides is booming," admits a senior police officer in Nayagarh district.

" I married an Oriya girl as I couln't get one in Jhansi." Chippu Kushwaha, 32

" I married an Oriya girl as I couldn't get one in Jhansi."
Chippu Kushwaha, 32
Occasional farm hand
Wife: Sandwani
From Kaliyapada
Jobless most of the time, Chippu of Baruasagar village, Jhansi, occasionally sells vegetables for a living. Six years ago, he handed over his entire savings of Rs 10,000 to a broker to buy a bride. They have two children.

Last month, the Jhansi police arrested three operators who were accompanying four girls, but no case was registered. "I was told by the local police that the girls had come from Orissa to visit their relatives," says SSP R.L. Meena. According to K.L. Dhruva, the subdivisional officer (police) of Niwari in Tikamgarh district, the racket carries on with the connivance of the lower-rung police personnel. "I have sent at least half a dozen girls back to Orissa, but I can't do anything more than that in the absence of complaints," says Dhruva.

Besides Nayagarh, other favourite marketplaces in Orissa are in Khurda and Bhubaneswar districts. With the overwhelming majority there being either landless or marginal farmers with small landholdings, these districts are steeped in poverty. Of late, the region has been in the grip of droughts, floods and cyclones which have wreaked havoc with the local economy. One consequence of this has been the "dadan" labour practice: illiterate, unemployed young men being picked up by agents or contractors of farmers from Punjab and Haryana to work as bonded labour. In most cases the men never come back, even to visit their families. With most of the young men deserting their homeland, the families they leave behind live in miserable conditions. A fallout of this has been the acute problem locals face in getting their daughters married.

Over at Bundelkhand, the land is barren and rocky, water is scarce and jobs are hard to come by. The past decade has seen the economy reach its nadir and the illiterate and jobless young men remain bachelors right into their early '30s. Says Sudhanshu Tripathi, a Youth Congress leader: "Parents in this region send their girls to other parts of the state. They never marry them off to the local boys."

Enter the operators whose modus operandi is shrewd and horrifyingly simple. Mostly traders from Bundelkhand, they frequently visit Bhubaneswar and the adjoining districts to sell the ginger that is abundantly grown back home. During their visits, these salesmen come into contact with the poverty-stricken labourers and strike "suitable matches" for their daughters with equally desperate young men in Bundelkhand, provided both families pay a minimum amount as "expenditure" -- expenses such as train fares.

According to the villagers of Nayagarh, it all started with a genuine match that was arranged between a local girl and a visiting Jhansi boy in the early '90s. Months later, the girl came back home bedecked with jewellery and full of stories about how well off her husband was. Cashing in on the situation, operators swung into action and began match-making. Though the amount demanded then ranged between Rs 10,000 and Rs 15,000, operators began to undercut prices as the racket spread. The amount demanded today is down to between Rs 5,000 and Rs 8,000. "More than 20 people, including women, are running this operation," says a police official on the condition of anonymity. He adds that in most cases, the local police extort Rs 1,000 from the both the potential bridegroom and the operator to look the other way.

The issue involves more than just the fact that the girls are sold like commodities. They have absolutely no say in the matter, even when, as in some cases, the groom is disabled. Quite often girls are sold more than once, each buyer exploiting them physically and mentally. Two years ago, 17-year-old Pratima was sold by an operator to Radhey Shyam Yadav of Devendrapura village in Tikamgarh district of Madhya Pradesh for Rs 10,000. He kept her for 10 days and then sold her to Mula Kachi, also of the same village for Rs 7,000. Pratima was sold two more times but refused to go with her fifth husband. In quite a few cases, the girls are sexually molested by the traders before they are sold off, but they are too terrified to complain.

So far, the police have been unable to stop the trade. They did make an attempt after one girl, like Pratima, objected to being repeatedly sold and refused to accompany her husband. She filed a complaint at the Niwari police station in Tikamgarh district last November. Following the complaint, six people were arrested and charged under Section 344/336/368. But they managed to get bail and now it's business as usual.

For most of the brides, happiness is elusive. Tied to families living in penury, little has changed for them even after marriage. Since most of them speak only Oriya, they are unable to communicate with anyone in their new homes. Though there are no caste barriers -- Brahmins, Thakurs and backward castes have been bought and sold alike -- the girls do not command much respect and are not treated as equals with local women. "They are suspect because they have been bought," says Mehar Sahay Yadav, a landlord of Barua Sagar village in Jhansi. For the girls, the new life they had pinned their hopes on has turned out to be little different from the one they left behind.