BHALI ANANDPUR, India -- Four years ago, as is the custom here, Jai Palarwal and his wife set out to find a bride for their eldest son. They buttonholed friends and relatives, and after two years finally secured a meeting with the parents of a teenage girl from another village. But the marriage was not to be. The parents thought their daughter could do better.
Since then, there hasn't even been a nibble.
"The ones who are looking want a groom with a government job and large tracts of land, and we have neither," said Palarwal, a retired electrician, as he lounged on a rope cot outside his modest four-room home. "The girls' parents have become very choosy."
They can afford to be. The parents in question live in the state of Haryana, and Haryana is running out of girls.
A fertile farming state just west of New Delhi, Haryana produces a smaller share of girls, relative to overall births, than almost anywhere else in India. The 2001 census found just 820 girls for every 1,000 boys among children under age 6, down from 879 in 1991. The lopsided sex ratio reflects the spread of modern medical technology, particularly ultrasound exams, which allow Indian couples to indulge a cultural preference for sons by using abortion to avoid having girls.
The situation in Haryana has become so desperate that some parents are not only dropping their demands for wedding dowries, a tradition that still has a wide following in India, but are offering a "bride price" to families of prospective mates for their sons.
"That's what I'll try," said Palarwal, adding that he is prepared to offer up to 25,000 rupees -- about $520 -- to the family of the right girl. "Even if the girl is squint-eyed, I'll get my son married," he said.
much more here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...-2002Dec1.html
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Wellsit there and kill girl babies, who the heck will these guys marry?
Hope they got plenty of lube.
No big surprise.
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