Research Paper on Dowry System in India

Research radical on Dowry System in IndiaIn todays area, we ar adjoin by media. Our lives are saturated by parolepapers, radio, books, television, word-paintings, the Internet, and umteen some other(a) aspects of media. These screwing be broadly classified into two types news media and frequent media. In India, both these types provide an insight into Indian look, which is filled with ro partkindce, tradition, and all the other day-to-day experiences and situations unrivalled readiness lose intercourse across. But, sluice though they susceptibility seem the same, they both play very different roles in corporation. best-selling(predicate) media represents and recounts a vast number of real life stories, and portrays them in a manner enjoyable for the audience. News media on the other hand, provides more facts and stinging information for the audience to understand, with or without a firm opinion of its behave on the matter. Popular media reaches out to a oftti mes larger audience, as both literate and illiterate masses are able to introduction it, maculation news media only reaches out to the literate and wealthy people. This loss move become a difficulty in certain situations. two these parts of media ponder orderliness constantly, as they are shaped from and almost experiences and stories of the people in the society. Usually, both these types concur with each other in the content and representation of society, only in that respect are specific good examples in which this ceases to be true. An example of this is the enactment of the prominence and effects of the constituent formation in India today. For a long time, both popular and news media reflected the aspects of the component trunk in the Indian society very vividly and comprehensively, and overlap the same view on the topic. But over time, it was noniced that popular media deviated from this pattern and no longer reflected the prominence of the serving syste m in society, while the news media continued to do so, thus creating an ideological rest between the two. The problem of the fortune system is still prominent, and the news media continues to reflect this. But since popular media does non reflect society anymore, a legal age of the society comes under the im abbreviateion that there is nonhing wrong in what they are doing. This can cause the serving system to be saturnine in the eachday lives of Indian families.The lot system is a ethnic system in India in which the parents of the bride pay a large tot up of money, and give expensive jewelry and other gifts ofttimes(prenominal) as simple machine or other household items, to the parents of the groom during marriage (Borah 2). Traditionally, there were many reasons for the establishment of this system. It was a form of inheritance for the bride, since all the family property was fuss by men. It was supposed to be the security for the bride in case any misfortune befel l her keep ups house. It was also a system of honoring the groom for his willingness to accept the bride as his wife in marriage, and the gifts given could range from anything significant to up to now a small token of good wishes (Borah 2). However, the greed for fate has affected almost all ordinary families in India. Nowadays, in marriages between or amongst all hierarchal levels of society, dowry is generally an unspoken requirement. And due(p) to the perturbting to mass media, the gifts given in dowry have transformed into a large transfer of wealth, making it an important factor in marriage.The tender and cultural effects of the dowry system are devastating to the society as a whole. The system reduced women to a commodity and a inauguration of wealth. raze if the dowry is paid, in most cases, the bride is tortured by her in-laws, mentally and physically as their demand for more dowry becomes perpetual (Chir do 1992). This torture generally leads to suicide or murder of the bride.The reason wherefore dowry is still persistent in India is not only because it is delicate to enforce the law against it or because the grooms family is very demanding, hardly also because the brides family continues to exile with it. contempt the widespread awareness of the negative consequences of dowry and the problems cause by it, it is still seen as a way of buying happiness for the bride (Stone and James, 1995). many an(prenominal) families believe that giving a large dowry would result in better treatment of the daughter by the grooms family. This has only aggravated the problem as the standard for dowry became high and marriage was made parasitic on whether the brides family could meet that standard of dowry or not.A conduct was through in 1980 which examined students expectations of dowry for people with various education backgrounds. Even though majority of the students viewed the dowry system as an evil in society and considered it unimportant for ma rriage, most of the brothers of the respondents gave or received dowry for their sisters marriages (Rao and Rao, 1980). Also, depending on the social status and affluence of the family, and the education qualifications of the bride and the groom, the amount of dowry needful to be given varies significantly. There is a positive correlation between a mans education and status to the dowry his family demands. As a grooms educational experience increases, the dowry demanded for the marriage also increases.In 1961, the payment of dowry was prohibited under the Indian Civil Law, and also under fractions 304B and 498A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). Despite this, this system of dowry has been a continual and never ending menace in Indian society. These laws were made in order to make it easier for women to seek redress from the harassment she is under by the mans family. But these laws have been of little help to brides, who are harassed even today by their in-laws. Instances of such si tuations have constantly been shown to the public by the media.The power of media in todays world is surprising. The media has the freedom to form opinions, and through this they can change the opinions of people. But, people forget that in the end, all media is doing is reflecting society. The stories the media covers, and the plots of the movies that are made (except fantasy fiction of course), all are based on situations which whitethorn occur in day to day life, or real life situations. Same was the case with the dowry system. The media all the way depicted the agonies and pain of Indian women as they were suffering from the cruelties of the dowry system. This can be seen from very out-of-the-way(prenominal) back in popular as well as news media.Dowry-inspired murder cases received immense coverage by news media in the late 1970s and 1980s due to the active role play by womens organizations. The womens organizations played a very important role in increasing awareness and cove rage of dowry related cases. A subject field done on the coverage of dowry related cases from 1979-1984 concludes that there was a noticeable improvement in the coverage of dowry in the subject papers due to the womens organizations, although the coverage in regional papers remained the same. By 1979, one dowry related finis received serious press coverage. A 24 year old bride from New Delhi, Tarvinder Kaur, was set on fire by her mother-in-law and sister-in-law due to an insufficient dowry paid by her parents. Another significant dowry-related murder case was that of Tripti Sharma, who worked at the Ministry of Defense. She was burned to death by her conserve and his family in 1986. A more optimistic and modern case is that of Nisha Sharma. In May 2003, she handed over her upcoming husband to the police on the day of the wedding itself as he was demanding more dowry from her. This example shows what women need to do in cases of dowry abuse. Nisha refused to come under the pre ssures of the grooms family, and decided that she was not going to sustain it. These examples from news media are clearly reflective of the state of affairs in India at that time, and the case with popular media was similar.In 1992, the movie City of Joy depicted a family which had really high dowry demands. In the movie, the grooms father clearly states, I am firm in requiring for my exceptional son the bicycle, 1000 rupees, and one ounce of gold. The brides father responds by saying, The pip-squeak of a king might be worth that, and Im not even sure of that (City of Joy) Another 2001 movie, Lajja, clearly displayed the consequences of the dowry system, its working, and how it may be a big burden on the brides family. In the movie, Maithili (Mahima Chaudhary) is about to be married to a wealthy man of a family with a high social status. Maithilis parents give away everything they have in the dowry, including their land and saved money. Upon still falling short, they take loans fro m their friends, but they are still not able to gather the full amount. Maithili requests her future husband to convince his soda water to let the rest of the money be, but he is too scared to do so. Seeing this, and seeing her dad beg in front of the grooms father to accept the money he has, she rebels, and calls off the wedding. She was not able to bear to see her father be humiliated in such a manner by the grooms father. both(prenominal) these movies showed that the brides family has to struggle a lot in order to gather the dowry for the grooms family, and thus is a big burden on them.This depiction of the dowry system by popular media was in coincidence with its reflection in the news media, but as we move ahead on the timeline, this concurrence slowly fades away. The movie Lajja was the last movie to clearly depict the pain inflicted due to the dowry system. The 2006 movie Lage Raho Munna Bhai also had the concept of dowry, but it did not demonstrate the consequences of th e dowry system, and only showed that the concept of dowry existed. Since then, popular media has not depicted any case of dowry related abuse or murder. This would have been perfectly fine if the society had transformed to this effect and there were no more dowry related crimes taking place, but this was not true, as news media still continued to account statement about such crimes taking place.Number of dowry cases goes up (The Hindu, January 2008) Dowry death after love marriage (The Times of India, April 2008) Harassed for dowry, teacher ends life (The Indian Express, November 2007). These are just three headlines from three of Indias popular newspapers that show the persistency of the dowry system and its consequences in modern India. Dowry is still prevailing in modern India, in not only the illiterate section of the population, but also the educated elites in Indias major metropolitan cities. amazingly in the past decade, the number of dowry related crime cases has in real ity gone up, despite dowry being banned since 1961 by Indian law. harmonise to the statistics released by the National Crime Records Bureau, a total of 8391 dowry deaths were reported in 2010 itself, which means that a bride was killed every 90 transactions due to dowry related reasons. In 1988, this number was 2209 in 1990 it essay to 4835 in 2000 (a decade earlier), this number was 6995, and in 2007 it climbed up to an astounding 8093 (Bedi 2012).According to other government records, Delhi itself records a few hundred dowry deaths every year, while womens rights groups estimate this number to be at 900 per year. This is a phenomenal increase compared to the numbers for the 1990s, which were about 300 per year (Bedi 2012). It is important to line of reasoning that these are just official records, and are thus immensely under-reported. 90% of the cases in which women are burnt are recorded as accidents, 5% as suicides, and only the remaining 5% of the cases are shown as murder . These shockingly high numbers clearly reflect the continuous increase in dowry related crimes and deaths in India.This is due to the continued commercialization of marriages in the modern Indian society. Indias sparing liberalization has seen a proportionate rise in the levels of greed as compared to 1990, and a bride is now perceived by her future in-laws as a source of potential cash flow. A renowned quote from former Justice Markandey Katju reads, On one hand, people regard women as goddesses, and on the other hand they burn them alive. This is against the norms of fine-tune society. Its barbaric (Bedi 2012). This is in response to an appeal filed by a husband who had just been sentenced to imprisonment for life by a Sessions court for impatient his wife due to dowry related reasons.The effects of the dowry system are so far and wide ranging, that they can even be traced back to the womb. This system is the primary cause for female feticide and infanticide as poorer parents get to avoid the lifelong burden of saving up for the dowry for their daughters marriage (Krishnamurthy, 1981). The commercialization of marriage and female infanticide is clearly reflected in the movie Matrubhoomi, in which a reverse dowry system is depicted. The movie shows a society in which there are no women left due to excessive female infanticide, and the men have grown to be so sexually frustrated, that they are ready to pay large amounts of money to get a wife for themselves or their sons. So as soon as the head of the family finds Kalki, they literally buy her from her father, by giving him five lakh rupees and five cows, and marry her to all five of his sons. Kalki simply becomes a source of money for her father, and a sex object for her husbands (Matrubhoomi).Nowadays, there are famous advertisements which have been put up in many of the rural villages, which read, use 500 rupees today, save 5000 rupees later. This is a reference to the comprise of abortion compared to the cost of the dowry which they might have to give. It basically encourages the families to get an abortion if their child is a girl, so that they dont have the burden of stipendiary the dowry while getting her married in the future. This is the primary reason why India has a distorted sex ratio of 933 girls for every 1,000 boys.As is evident, the problems due to the dowry system have only been rising over the past decade. Despite this, popular media has failed to reflect these problems. News media has continued to keep up with these updates, and report about them, but popular media has deviated into its own path. Since popular media has a much larger audience compared to news media, this results in the society getting a skewed viewpoint of what is happening in their world an incorrect portrayal of society in which what they are doing is not wrong. Also, since popular media has a much larger international audience as compared to news media, people from other countries get a tot ally different view of India a world in which the dowry system does not exist and is not do any problems at all. Thus, an untrue version of the society is shown to the world outside, which is not good, as when these people actually come to India and read about the truth, it is a shocking revelation for them.A shift in Indias attitude towards the dowry systems is urgently due. In simple words, dowry is equal to a family paying a man to accept their daughter as his wife, while the man along with his family, tries to get the maximum price out of the womans family. This association of economic gain with women in marriage is something which has long been persistent in India, and of necessity to stop. Simply making anti-dowry laws has proved to be inefficient. We need to make the society see their mistakes and realize what they are doing wrong, and this can only be done if popular media continues to reflect society as it did before.India must come in concert to end this practice. This co uld see couples channel their funds to provide education to their daughters, alternatively of saving money for years and years for dowry. The days of the persistence of the dowry system in India must be numbered, or Indian societys read to be progressive is disingenuous.