Ruhani
Kaur
INDIA"s INVISIBLE WOMEN
35 million* Indian females are missing today. Some were killed in the womb, some as infants, while others succumbed in their desperate bid to have a male child. As the pendulum swings alarmingly towards a lopsided sex ratio, women find themselves being tugged from both ends.
On the one hand, they are pressurised to aggravate the shortage by acting as fertility machines for male heirs. However, as the number of ‘bare sticks’ or bachelors grows, they are also made to fill the deficit by being trafficked for marriage or even shared among brothers. As the situation gets more and more precarious, cracks in the walls of the family unit are beginning to show.
This visual narrative looks at some of those left behind…
Above: No-one saw Rani pregnant, villagers suggest that she may have 'bought' the son who she alleges to have given birth to at 53. Sixteen years after her seven daughters and 12 years after she got a grandson.
Below: Rajbala, 27 is pregnant yet again, the youngest of her six daughters is barely 5 months old. A wrong ultrasound prognosis in the past has got her mother-in-law praying this time for a grandson.
Above: Bani has conceived 11 times till date and only six of her daughters are alive, rest ended in miscarriages. She has been warned another attempt to have a male child could prove fatal.
Above left: Mukti from girls: 35 million females are missing today. Some were killed in the womb, some as infants, while others succumbed in their desperate bid to have a male child.
Above right: Dr Kaul, DHMS from Bihar, prescribes ‘medicinal herbs’ during pregnancy that he alleges alters gender. These are often concoctions of peacock feather and gold ash laced with unhealthy arsenic levels.
Above: After the accidental death of her only child, an 18-year old son, Shweta went to a ‘baba’. She did have a son but he was still born due to a fusion deformity, an affect of the prescribed medicinal herb she took.
Below: When Kalpa got pregnant for the seventh time, her husband threw her out of the house on the grounds of her being a girl-bearing wretch. Kalpa now stays in a shelter home with mentally unstable women.
Above: Dheeru, a 40-year-old truck driver arranged for two girls from Odisha for his younger brothers. He then got a 18-year-old Bengali girl for himself and now often finds brides for his bachelor friends, but at a price.
Below: 20-year-old Chandani was brought from Odisha as a help. She instead was married off to Jabbar, a 70-year-old widower with six daughters who lives in a village in Haryana with his 60-year-old bachelor brother.
Above: Dheeru, a 40-year-old truck driver arranged for two girls from Odisha for his younger brothers. He then got a 18-year-old Bengali girl for himself and now often finds brides for his bachelor friends, but at a price.
Below: 20-year-old Chandani was brought from Odisha as a help. She instead was married off to Jabbar, a 70-year-old widower with six daughters who lives in a village in Haryana with his 60-year-old bachelor brother.
Above: After her mother’s death, Savita’s father married her off in a family with three unmarried brothers. In Mansa such arrangements are an accepted norm.
Below: The eldest of the five brothers married Jaspreet, over time as their earnings increased the middle one married Veena. Now the two collectively look after the single brothers.
