After prohibition, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar now vows to end dowry, child marriage

When a young man from his village came to him to help kidnap a girl to be his bride, it was just another job for Bakhtiarpur's deputy mukhiya Pappu Kumar. The girl, just 12, was abducted and forced to marry the youth. Pappu even coerced the child's father into signing a 'letter of acceptance'.

This wasn't the first time Pappu and his men had pulled off such a thing. But this time it didn't go right. On the alert, following chief minister Nitish Kumar's October 2 'declaration of war' against child marriage and dowry, the police promptly arrested him along with four accomplices.

Nitish's new initiative aims to actively discourage the two illegal yet widely prevalent practices in the state. No stigma attaches to child marriage and there's hardly a nuptial where dowry, oftentimes including huge sums of cash, doesn't change hands. Nor do underage weddings raise many eyebrows in the state.

The Bihar chief minister is intent on changing that. "We will act against child marriage and dowry just as we did against liquor. This will complement and carry forward social changes that have begun taking shape because of prohibition," Nitish said, while launching his campaign on October 2 at Patna.

Consider the numbers: while Bihar ranked 26th in the country in the number of crimes against women, it was an ignoble second - after Uttar Pradesh - in dowry-related offences. This includes 987 dowry deaths and 4,852 cases of dowry-related atrocities, just in 2016. Child marriages account for a disturbing 39 per cent of all weddings solemnised in the state.

In fact, the widely prevalent dowry tradition in Bihar seems to have spurred instances where grooms are abducted and forced to marry. "The abduction of boys for marriage is a direct consequence of social evils like dowry. In a patriarchal society like in Bihar, marriages have long been money-minting enterprises for boys' parents," says a senior police officer. So families desperate to wed daughters, he says, often resort to unlawful means.

But following the chief minister's October 2 announcement, police and civil administration officials in the state are gearing up to battle the twin scourges. The instructions are clear: all marriages where the brides are under 18 years or grooms below 21, or where dowry has changed hands, have to be stopped. And having seen Nitish's success in imposing prohibition in Bihar, they believe he can do this too.

"Child marriage and dowry cases will see a massive drop in the next one year and the society and environment of Bihar will change," says Nitish. On January 21 next year, the state government will organise a 'human chain' against dowry and child marriage, just as it did in support of prohibition and deaddiction on the very day this year.