Gurugram: Citing Haryana’s poor sex ratio as the main reason they are single, two associations of unmarried men in the state have reached out to the prime minister for succour.
In a joint letter sent last month, the Samast Avivaahit Purush Samaj (an association of bachelors past 40 years of age) and the Ekikrit Randa Union (an association of widowers) have drawn PM Narendra Modi’s attention towards their problems and sought relief.
Their demands include a census of bachelors and benefits for members of both groups under central and state government schemes. They have also asked for the coining of a better term than randa for widowers.
The letter, signed by Virendra Sangwan, the president of both organisations, points at ‘the increasing population of bachelors in Haryana because of female foeticide compounded by unemployment and poverty’. ThePrint has a copy of the letter.
According to 2011 Census, Haryana’s sex ratio stands at 879 females for every 1,000 males, way below the country’s 943 females against 1,000 males.
The letter says, “Our number runs in lakhs and we all have been becoming victims of frustration because of a lack of support and sympathy from our families and society…We are looked down upon and are made a point of ridicule in the society.”
Speaking to ThePrint Tuesday, 43-year-old Sangwan, a resident of Majra Piyau village in the Narnaund sub division of Hisar district, said that there were over 7 lakh single men above the age of 40 in Haryana, of whom at least 5 lakh are from his Jat community.
“The problem is particularly severe for us as no one is ready to give their daughter in marriage unless one has good landholdings or a government job,” said Sangwan, a graduate of Government College, Hansi. According to him, the two associations together have 1.27 lakh members, of whom 96,000 are bachelors.
Sangwan said former state finance minister and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Captain Abhimanyu, who represented the Narnaund constituency in the 2014-2019 assembly, managed to get the government to announce a monthly pension of Rs 2,750 for unmarried men and women above the age of 45 in July this year, but they are yet to receive this.
“We have to struggle for our family ID cards, ration cards and other such benefits,” he said.
Likewise, 47-year-old Wazir Panghal, a resident of Narnaund town, said being a bachelor deprives him of even two square meals on time.
The third among five brothers, Panghal said the older two and the youngest are married. Each of them has barely one-and-a-half acres of land. “I work on the family’s fields with labourers while my elder brothers are at home. Here, we don’t eat breakfast and lunch but just one meal. It is well past noon today. No one has brought me the meal and I don’t know when I will get it. Had I been married, I wouldn’t have suffered so,” he said.
He said that Narnaund has a large number of bachelors. “Truck bhar lo, phir bhi bach jayenge (they could fill a truck and many would still be left out).”
ThePrint connected with Captain Abhimanyu over the telephone while he was campaigning for the BJP in Madhya Pradesh Tuesday. The leader confirmed that CM Manohar Lal Khattar had announced the pension on his request.
“I was in my constituency earlier this year when Sangwan met me…I found that each village of my constituency had a large number of men in forced bachelorhood.”
“My niece, a college student, conducted a survey in Hisar and Jind districts which revealed that many of these men suffer from depression and quite a few are victims of substance abuse,” he added.
Speaking to ThePrint about the large number of single older men in the state, Girdhari Lal Singal, a former state drug controller and additional commissioner, Food and Drug Administration, Haryana, who works for the ‘Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao’ campaign, recalled accompanying French journalist Phillippe Trétiack to the hinterland for an article on female foeticide nearly two decades back.
In the article, ‘Le foeticide des filles en Inde, des femmes en voie de disparition’, first published in the French edition of Elle magazine in the early 2000s, the journalist wrote, “A syndicate of bachelors asked me laughingly, can I get them women from Vietnam, Russia or from anywhere else? They belonged to the Jat community, in theory these bachelors are landowners but over the generations their lands have been successively divided, considerably melting down their inheritance.”
Responding to ThePrint’s query on the pension scheme for bachelors, Praveen Attreya, media secretary, state government, said it had been cleared by the cabinet and the beneficiaries would start receiving it soon.
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Problems abound
Sangwan said he launched the Samast Avivaahit Purush Samaj in 2012 to fight for the rights of fellow bachelors. The Ekikrit Randa Union was launched a decade later as the problems of widowers were similar to those faced by aged bachelors.
The lack of a steady source of income has kept their chances of getting married low, he said. “Getting a government job is tough. There are barely any private job opportunities in our neighbourhood…On top of that, we are ridiculed for our bachelorhood…it’s tough to even get a room on rent as a bachelor,” he said.
Sangwan is the youngest, and the only bachelor, among three brothers. The family has roughly 1.5 bighas of land (slightly less than an acre).
He claimed that some with money even “buy” brides from other states. Such women are called molki (purchased brides) and their husbands are looked down upon. In some cases, these women have turned out to be members of “loot and scoot” gangs while others have filed rape complaints against their husbands, he said.
“We have more than 100 bachelors past the age of 40 in our village. Sisai, a larger village near Hansi, has more than 400 such bachelors…After a point, people like us face a lot of difficulties as we become dependent on our brothers’ families,” he said.
The demands
“Since female foeticide, unemployment and poverty are the reasons for this situation, the government should take steps to end it and set up a commission or a committee to oversee the efforts in this direction,” the letter to the PM said.
Among their demands is a census for all unmarried men above the age of 40. They have also sought reservation in Panchayati Raj institutions, a pension on the lines of widow pensions, and benefits under he Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana, Ayushman Bharat (healthcare scheme), and Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Antyodaya Parivaar Suraksha Yojana, a state government scheme that provides financial assistance to the family of an individual following their death or permanent disability.
They have also demanded family ID cards even for single-member families, pink ration cards (provided to the poorest of poor), free bus travel for pilgrimages, and a better word for widowers in place of “Randa”, the way “Divyang” has come to be used for the differently abled.
(Edited by Smriti Sinha)
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