Village councils in rajasthan have banned lavish weddings. They resolved to impose fines and social ostracism of offenders.
This is intended to reduce the burden of the girl's parents. This news brought great joy to me as these simple villagers have managed to do something that the highly educated and sophisticated haven't even thought of!!!
Expenses for a simple marriage in a city costs upwards of ten lakhs (considering venue cost of 2-3 lakhs, food @about 1000 per head for about 500-600 people and misc expenses). This does not even include all the other expenses like travel, accmdn, gifts and dowry etc. Even for a middle class family, the marriage expenses would not be less than 25-30 lakhs per girl child including post marriage rituals. This just doubles if one has two girl children. Where do people get this kind of money? They have to spend all their life long earnings and take further loans too to meet this requirement.
This is the fundamental reason for female infanticide. People are just scared of the expenses. We may try to educate the people as much as we want against female infanticide, but that would be just curing the symptom. The disease would not be cured. The primary disease is the expenditure involved in getting a girl married. This is the issue that needs to be addressed.
For starters, we may take a cue from these rajasthan villages and ban lavish marriages across the country. We can even think of centralised community marriages in each city/village and share the expenses amongst all concerned.
We need some truly radical solutions to make some progress in this direction and these rajasthan villages have taken a giant first step!!!
HATS OFF TO THEM
lavish weddings and female infanticide
This is intended to reduce the burden of the girl's parents. This news brought great joy to me as these simple villagers have managed to do something that the highly educated and sophisticated haven't even thought of!!!
Expenses for a simple marriage in a city costs upwards of ten lakhs (considering venue cost of 2-3 lakhs, food @about 1000 per head for about 500-600 people and misc expenses). This does not even include all the other expenses like travel, accmdn, gifts and dowry etc. Even for a middle class family, the marriage expenses would not be less than 25-30 lakhs per girl child including post marriage rituals. This just doubles if one has two girl children. Where do people get this kind of money? They have to spend all their life long earnings and take further loans too to meet this requirement.
This is the fundamental reason for female infanticide. People are just scared of the expenses. We may try to educate the people as much as we want against female infanticide, but that would be just curing the symptom. The disease would not be cured. The primary disease is the expenditure involved in getting a girl married. This is the issue that needs to be addressed.
For starters, we may take a cue from these rajasthan villages and ban lavish marriages across the country. We can even think of centralised community marriages in each city/village and share the expenses amongst all concerned.
We need some truly radical solutions to make some progress in this direction and these rajasthan villages have taken a giant first step!!!
HATS OFF TO THEM
Village councils in rajasthan have banned lavish weddings. They resolved to impose fines and social ostracism of offenders.
This is intended to reduce the burden of the girl's parents. This news brought great joy to me as these simple villagers have managed to do something that the highly educated and sophisticated haven't even thought of!!!
Expenses for a simple marriage in a city costs upwards of ten lakhs (considering venue cost of 2-3 lakhs, food @about 1000 per head for about 500-600 people and misc expenses). This does not even include all the other expenses like travel, accmdn, gifts and dowry etc. Even for a middle class family, the marriage expenses would not be less than 25-30 lakhs per girl child including post marriage rituals. This just doubles if one has two girl children. Where do people get this kind of money? They have to spend all their life long earnings and take further loans too to meet this requirement.
This is the fundamental reason for female infanticide. People are just scared of the expenses. We may try to educate the people as much as we want against female infanticide, but that would be just curing the symptom. The disease would not be cured. The primary disease is the expenditure involved in getting a girl married. This is the issue that needs to be addressed.
For starters, we may take a cue from these rajasthan villages and ban lavish marriages across the country. We can even think of centralised community marriages in each city/village and share the expenses amongst all concerned.
We need some truly radical solutions to make some progress in this direction and these rajasthan villages have taken a giant first step!!!
HATS OFF TO THEM
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