Thiruvananthapuram: In India’s strongly patriarchal societies where men hold sway in most aspects of family and social life, the boy child-craze has been a constant.
That mindset is slowly showing signs of change in Kerala.
Indicators are emerging that it is becoming difficult for many men in the state to get married as women have either capitalised on their better educational opportunities, which has in turn made them choosier about their partners, or changed their outlook towards marriage itself.
What is more curious about the situation is that Kerala is no China, where the one-child norm led to a lopsided sex ratio and men far outnumber women. In contrast, Kerala is unique in having more females than males, contrary to the general Indian picture.
One sub-trend within the Kerala’s overall picture of men finding it difficult to find brides is that women seem to be shunning grooms from the agriculture sector, which has been undergoing a meltdown over the past half a decade, following commodity price crashes.
In the latest pointer to the wedding woes for many Kerala men, a meeting was organised in Madikai, off Neeleswaram in Kerala’s northern Kasaragod district, to find brides for the local single men, many of them past 30 years.
Local media reported that the programme was attended more by women, who were looking for brides for their brothers or sons. The participants sat in a circle and discussed the topic, and even if the meeting failed to find brides for the hopeful men, the attendees were happy that they could at least discuss issues of caste, religion and gender, all of which are linked to traditional marriages in the country.
One attraction of the meeting was the invitation card sent out to participants by one Chandru Vellarikundu, which carried the tale of a man who went looking for a bride. The prospective brides the man approached had demands ranging from a good house, to a good job or a strong financial background. Crestfallen, he then approached a jack fruit tree which had no such demand, and married it.
Participants at the meeting offered multiple reasons for the plight of single men, including an education-fuelled rise in social status for women, and a new-found freedom for women in the backdrop of increasing opportunities for them.
The problem appears to be particularly acute in farming communities. An official publication of the Kanjirapally Syro-Malabar diocese had drawn attention to this problem over a year ago, highlighting the number of bachelors in Idukki district, known for its once-thriving agricultural sector which is now in decline.
The Madikai meeting suggests that the problem is not limited to some pockets in Kerala, but more prevalent that thought earlier.
