Articles by Ravinder Kaur

While cross-regional and cross-cultural marriages appear to be occurring more often, it is Bengali brides who seem to be migrating to far-flung and culturally strange, rural destinations away from their own homeland. This article uncovers reasons for this bridal diaspora and finds that in West Bengal, a consumption smoothing strategy of the family is to marry one daughter in a socially approved dowry marriage in the state itself and send the rest out as marriage migrants. However, migrating as a bride achieves both marriage and work. Sexual and reproductive labours combine with economic labour, pointing to the increasingly complex forms of migrating in which women are imbricated.

Daughters may not be wanted but daughters-in-law are necessary for family well-being and perpetuation. Similarly, not all sons in the family receive equal treatment and those who are left bachelors suffer a lesser fate. This paper attempts to move beyond currently available explanations of low sex ratios and daughter elimination. While supporting the hypothesis that large peasant castes in the north and north-west practised infanticide, non-marriage of men and polyandry as strategies to control family numbers in relation to available resources, this paper makes three arguments: one, that these strategies occurred together, two, that one needs to go beyond this explanation to understand why daughters were the dispensable ones and, three, that the number of sons wanted was by no means unlimited.

Given the declining juvenile sex ratio, a further shortfall in marriageable women in the low sex ratio areas of India is a foregone conclusion. What are the 'social' implications of this shortage for both men and women? This paper documents and analyses an unusual response to the shortage of marriageable girls in the North. The need for women, for productive and reproductive purposes, is being addressed through unconventional marriages that are uniting rural, illiterate Indians across boundaries of region, language, religion and even caste.