Why laws have failed to tackle dowry deaths

Indian women will remain vulnerable to violence at home until they achieve the financial ability to walk away from abuse

Last week three young women — sisters who were married to three brothers of the same family — in Rajasthan's Jaipur district took their own lives by jumping into a well. The children of one of the sisters, a little boy of four and a 22-day-old infant, died with them. The other two sisters were pregnant. According to an FIR filed by the father of the women, they used to be tortured and beaten up by their husbands and in-laws over demands of dowry. In her WhatsApp status, the youngest sister, 20-year-old Kamlesh, wrote in Hindi, "It's better to die once and for all than die every day…We don't want to die, but our in-laws harass us."

Now pause a while and try to imagine their state of mind. Imagine their feeling of absolute helplessness, their belief that they had no other choice, no other way out, that there would be no sanctuary, no redress, and the only life they would ever know was this life of torment they found themselves in. Imagine the depth of despair that made them take their children — the born and the unborn — with them when they plunged into what they felt was their only escape route.

The heartbreaking triple suicide will soon be another statistic, another tally mark in the list of thousands of dowry deaths that take place in the country every year. Yet, even though they occur with sickening regularity — according to data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), 19 women died every day of dowry-related causes in 2020 — the conversation around crimes related to dowry seems to have rather fallen off the map in recent times.

One must remember, though, that there is no hierarchy to the crimes against women. Whether it is rape or domestic violence or abetment to suicide or murder over dowry, they are all manifestations of the same impulse to oppress and subjugate women. Notwithstanding the many progressive laws to protect and empower women, the fact is that their delivery has lacked teeth, and most Indian women are as vulnerable as ever within their own homes and without.

Let's look at dowry itself. To be sure, a bunch of legislation has been enacted to tackle dowry-related crimes. These include the Dowry Prohibition Act, 1961, putting in the offence of "dowry death" under Section 304B of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), Section 406 of IPC, which caters to criminal breach of trust when a woman's dowry is not returned, Section 498A of the IPC which pertains to cruelty to a woman by her husband and his relatives, and so on. There is also the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005, which, though not specifically concerned with dowry, can be applied when a woman is abused or assaulted in her matrimonial home.

However, six decades after the Dowry Prohibition Act was instituted, the giving and taking of dowry continues to be a socially accepted custom. Even today, most Indian marriages are heavily transactional, with the bride's family giving "gifts" of cash, gold, and other goods to the groom. The dowry a girl brings to her husband's family is taken to be both a measure of her worth and her parental family's social and economic prestige. Unless coercion is reported, the legal ban on dowry has been pretty much worthless.

A 2021 World Bank study that examined 40,000 marriages in rural India between 1960 and 2008 found that dowry was paid in 95 per cent of the marriages, and, adjusting for inflation, the quantum of the payout was more or less stable over the years. Experts say that the patterns of dowry payments would not be much different today, given that there have been no significant changes in marriage markets, laws and so on.

Unfortunately, just as the practice of dowry has thrived, so has the persecution of women over it. According to NCRB data, there were 7167, 7141 and 6966 dowry deaths in the years 2018, 2019 and 2020, respectively. If one is being cynical, the slight decline in the numbers in 2020 could be attributed to the pandemic when there were probably more existential things to worry about than whether your father-in-law had given you a big enough car at the time of marriage and whether you should beat your wife black and blue if he had not.

The way out of this persistent cycle of violence against women is obviously, their economic independence and, hence, their ability to walk away from an abusive marital home, knowing that they would not starve or face social opprobrium if they did so. Enabling laws have been enacted in this regard as well. Whether it is the Prevention of Child Marriage Act, the Right to Education Act, the many government schemes and policies for the uplift of the girl child, or a (Hindu) daughter's right to an equal share of the parental property — each of these can aid the Indian girl's journey towards economic and social security, which automatically opens up her choices and frees her from the need to suffer violence and humiliation in marriage.

Yet how many girls and women in India's vast hinterland are aware of the laws they can invoke to protect and advance themselves? Even if they are dimly aware of some laws, how many can hope to be supported by their parental families if they file a police complaint against their husband and in-laws? How many go to the courts to stake their claim on their ancestral property, which have traditionally been appropriated by the sons? And despite such glittering slogans as Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao (and the mega-budget ad campaign to promote them), how many families are actually focused on educating their girls and giving them a decent start in life?

It is true that social change takes place incrementally. And perhaps we are at a better place than we were a century ago. But in spite of the many success stories of Indian women, the reality is that a huge majority of them have little or no agency over their lives. Significantly, India has one of the lowest female labour force participation rates in the world. A World Bank estimate put it at 19 per cent in 2020, down from 26 per cent in 2005. These are not the kind of numbers that make one optimistic about the status of women in the country or their ability to not take violence and oppression lying down.

When it comes to women's empowerment in India, charity really begins at home. The social messaging and financial incentives need to be directed at the parents, above all, so they can throw off the stranglehold of patriarchy and educate their girls and put them on the path to economic independence. This, in turn, would liberate them from a lifetime of enslavement, which translates into being yoked to relentless household duties at best or being battered and assaulted at worst.

The three women who died by suicide in Rajasthan last week may not have taken that extreme step if they could have aspired to an alternative life. But like so many of their sisters across the country, they could not even contemplate the possibility of such an aspiration.

(Shuma Raha is a journalist and author)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.