Hisar: A huge group of unmarried men sits under a well-built shelter on cots surrounded by trees, cribbing about how their lives are being spent in misery — no employment, no wives and no children. “It is a life of constant humiliation. We are a laughing stock. Moreover, we are all called randa here,” 45-year-old Virender Sangwan says.
Sangwan had formed the Samast Avivahit Purush Samaj (association of bachelors past 40 years of age) in 2012 and the Ekikrit Randa Union (association of widowers) in 2022 to voice the concerns of around seven lakh single men in Haryana — a majority of them being from the Jat community. He built this shelter in Majra Piyau village in Haryana’s Hisar to host these men who had no one to reach out to.
This time, Sangwan and other members say, the associations have decided not to vote in the Lok Sabha elections, unless a political party gives a written undertaking that it will properly implement pension schemes for unmarried people and widowers.
A similar demand had been voiced in Jind during the 2014 election season, where bachelors had asked Lok Sabha candidates to bring them brides in exchange for votes.
All 10 Lok Sabha seats in Haryana will go to polls on 25 May.
“We will not vote this time. What is the point of voting when all they do is provide us with empty promises? Census hasn’t been done. We had demanded a bachelors’ census, but the exact reality of the sex ratio in Haryana will come out, when the census is conducted. The BJP came to power, saying Beti Bachao Beti Padhao, but nothing has changed,” says Sangwan.
This problem seems to have stemmed from the skewed sex ratio in Haryana. Moreover, the state’s unemployment problem, which tends to force the youth to migrate to other states and countries, further increases the stigma for these unmarried men, who say that they are often denied employment opportunities and rental houses, because of the lack of wives and children.
Until December 2022, Haryana had a high unemployment rate of 11.3 percent, among the highest in the country at the time, according to the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation’s Periodic Labour Force Survey. However, the December 2023 data recorded a dip in the rate to 3.1 percent. As of March 2024, Haryana’s unemployment rate stood at 4.1 percent.
In July last year, a pension scheme was introduced in Haryana that promised Rs 2,750 to all unmarried men and women in the age group of 45-60. Those with an annual income of less than Rs 1.8 lakh are eligible for the pension, besides widows/widowers earning less than Rs 3 lakh per year. According to Sangwan, the two associations founded by him have around 1.25 lakh members.
This scheme was announced, following a survey conducted by a niece of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Captain Abhimanyu, an MLA from the Narnaund constituency in 2014-2019. However, members of the two single men’s associations complain that except for one or two persons, the vast majority of those eligible for the benefits have received none, despite having completed their documentation. Last year, a letter addressed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi was forwarded by the two associations demanding a bachelors’ census, pensions and usage of a different word for widowers.
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‘Not everyone can afford to buy brides’
At surface level, Haryana’s Beti Bachao Beti Padhao seems to be a well-oiled machine with doctors, ASHA workers and health officials working round the clock to curb female foeticide.
However, in reality, the number of raids have gone down, and the syndicates conducting sex determination tests and illegal medical termination of pregnancies have changed their modus operandi. Ultrasound centres have been replaced with moving vans, machines with tiny portable devices, and prices of MTP kits have gone up to Rs 1,500 in the black market.
Data accessed by ThePrint shows that according to the civil registration data, Haryana’s sex ratio stands at 914 girls per 1,000 boys, as of March 2024. The yearly sex ratio has also dipped with a sharp decline of 942 in 2022 to 921 in 2023.
The worst-performing among the 22 districts in Haryana are Mahendragarh at 871, Gurugram at 871, Rohtak at 879, Kaithal at 886, Panipat at 887, Jind at 890, Faridabad at 898, Rewari at 900 and Hisar at 911.
According to the 2011 Census, the state’s sex ratio stood at 879 women for every 1,000 men, way below the national average of 943 women against 1,000 men.
Data from Haryana’s Beti Bachao Beti Padhao team, exclusively accessed by ThePrint, shows that in the last five years, only a total of 1,189 FIRs have been lodged till March 2024, under the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PNDT) Act and the Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) Act. This, essentially, means that only as many raids, including inter-state raids, were conducted in the last six years.
Vijender Singh, 45, a native of Hisar’s Petwar village says, “In my village, there are 170 unmarried men above the age of 45. We are depressed. Some have taken to drugs and alcohol.”
“The government’s Beti Bachao Beti Padhao has fallen flat. If they don’t address it now, things will get worse. The number of unmarried and unemployed people will increase. Government throws a lollipop before elections, and then they forget. This time, we won’t vote, and even if we do, it will be in exchange for our demands for pensions, bachelor census,” he adds.
72-year-old Om Prakash has cancer and is bedridden most of the time. Of the five brothers in his family, only one got married. “Who will give us brides? We have no money or assets, except for some farming land. Not everyone can afford to buy brides,” Prakash says.
Karamveer, 45, another resident of Majra Piyau, did manage to get married, but the woman left him after three days. “I couldn’t earn much. Employment opportunities are negligible here, and I am not educated,” he says. He had found his bride in Punjab.
(Edited by Mannat Chugh)
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Playing victim after getting yourself into this mess is a old issue with most people
its a shame that these stupid men from haryana has changed the sex ratio by their misogynistic traditions, and clinging to it . Now have the cheek to ask rest of the country to pay for their stupidity.