It is being referred to as China's 21st Century male marriage squeeze and it is something we Indians would do well to heed. China’s bachelor village is full of unmarried men; men who find it difficult to find a spouse for any of many reasons, including the fact that there are just not enough women to go around. Sound familiar?
This situation is a result of the historic Chinese preference for boys over girls as well as the Communist Party’s one child policy of the past. China's one child policy was introduced in the late 70s and early 80s as a population control measure and has been formally phased out only recently. Apart from aging population, there is another fallout of the policy: gender disparity. Rural Chinese couples were permitted to have a second child only if the first was a girl. The policy led to instances of female infanticide, forced abortions and the cause of China's gender imbalance. The phenomenon known as “bare branches” or unmarried men is now a problem in the country.
The preference for the male child is endemic and generalized in India though it is worse in some areas than others. Elective abortions following clandestine sex determination is rampant and the gender disparity is shocking as a result. The overall population ratio is 943 females to every 1000 males in India.
More dominantly patriarchal societies and those with low education levels show some of the worst male-female ratios. Apart from elective termination of female fetuses, there are less family resources spent on a female child's health, nutrition and care which leads to more female babies dying than male babies.
According to experts, there are several fallouts of this gender gap. It is a fact that young men find it difficult to find wives; witness the ‘bride drought’ in certain communities where brides have to be ‘imported’ or ‘bought’. For instance women are often trafficked from rural areas in other states to fulfil the demand for bride-less boys of Haryana.
Increase of violent crimes against women is yet another of the fallouts of there not being enough women and excess unmarried men in society. It is mostly the poorly educated men with no real prospects and those on the fringes of society who lose out on finding brides and who turn to crime and in particular crime against women according to researchers, “(such) men hang out together, befriend each other, compete with each other and legitimize each others’ “risky choices.” When clumped together and left to their own devices, they become a tool of social disorder”.
Perhaps there is no lesson we can learn from China that our social ills have not already taught us. The abysmal sex ratio, not enough brides for the number of men available, increase of violent crime against women…. All these are realities right now. What else has to happen for Indians to value girls, to cherish them… to want them, to let them be born and to live?
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