Caste-based rigidity in Indian marriages continues to have a tight grip on the social hierarchy in the country. A 2014 study revealed that only five per cent of Indians said they had married a person from a different caste.
Bhubaneshwar: In a bid to encourage inter-caste marriage in the state, the Odisha Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe development minister Ramesh Chandra Majhi announced a hiked incentive of Rs. 2.5 lakh from Rs. 1 lakh on Wednesday.
The incentive was increased to keep pace with the times and encourage more inter-caste marriages for social equality and removing untouchability, the minister said.
“Odisha had last time increased the amount from `50,000 to `1 lakh in 2017. A marriage in which one of the spouses belonged to the Scheduled Caste and the other belonged to a non-Scheduled Caste would be considered for the incentive. According to the rule, the couple shall have to apply for sanction and will have to execute a bond,” reported The Asian Age.
“The couple has to refund the amount within a year if the marriage ends in divorce within five years,” a government official said in the report.
“The incentive amount would be deposited in a joint account of the couple in any nationalised bank and they would be able to withdraw the amount only after three years of marriage, he said,” reported The Business Standard.
“The amount would be given to the beneficiaries, irrespective of their economic background. Majhi said they can purchase land or other household articles with the money,” the report added.
In 2015, The proposal to encourage inter-caste marriages was first discussed in the meeting of the Scheduled Caste Welfare Advisory board under the chairmanship of state chief minister Naveen Patnaik.
In 2017-18 fiscal, as many as 543 couples availed the benefit, for which the state government spent Rs. 2.65 crore as an incentive. Similarly, 3,800 married couples availed the incentives under the provision in the last five years. The maximum number of married couples to get the benefits were from Balasore district followed by Cuttack and Jagatsinghpur districts.
At least 17 per cent of the state’s population belongs to SC.
What PM Modi had announced in 2017
The Dr. Ambedkar scheme for social Integration through inter-caste marriage’ was started in 2013 by the then UPA government led by Congress. The target was to provide a monetary incentive to at least 500 such inter-caste couples per year. As per rules, such couples whose total annual income does not exceed Rs. 5 lakh are eligible to get a one-time incentive of Rs. 2.5 lakh from the Centre. The scheme was for all couples where either the bride or the bridegroom is a Dalit. The other pre-conditions were that it should be their first marriage, and it should be registered under the Hindu Marriages Act, with the proposal being submitted within a year of marriage, Financial Express had reported in 2017.
The scheme fared poorly as only five out of the promised 500 couples received the sum and only the Hindu marriages were eligible, rejecting cases under Special Marriages Act.
“As against an annual target of 500 couples, merely five were given the sum in 2014-15. In 2015-16, only 72 of the 522 couples who applied were approved, while 45 of the 736 applications were cleared in 2016-17. This year, of the 409 proposals it has received so far, the social justice ministry has cleared only 74 couples. According to officials, the low approval rate is often due to the fact that the couples don’t meet all the pre-conditions. For instance, only intermarriages registered under the Hindu Marriage Act are eligible, disregarding the several cases registered under the Special Marriages Act,” the report stated.
The report added that the scheme’s stated purpose was to counter the Hindu practice of marrying on the “traditional grounds of jatis (castes) and up-jatis (sub-castes).” The idea is derived from the teachings of Babasaheb Ambedkar, who said that caste and endogamy (the custom of marrying within one’s own community) are the same things. He had noted that “Prohibition, or rather the absence of intermarriage — endogamy, to be concise — is the only one that can be called the essence of caste” and advocated “fusion” through intermarriage (exogamy).
Other Indian states and their incentives
Haryana had announced a similar scheme in January 2018 with a Rs. 1.01 lakh incentive. “In Haryana, beneficiaries of the Mukhyamantri Samajik Samarsta Antarjatiya Vivah Shagun Yojana could apply for incentives for inter-caste marriage within three years from the date of their marriage instead of one year, earlier. Under the scheme, a grant of Rs 1.01 lakh was given to a Scheduled Caste person of Haryana who married a non-Scheduled Caste person. The scheme was launched to promote communal harmony and for encouraging inter-caste marriages,” the Indian Express reported.
Rajasthan government was one of the first to incentivize inter-caste marriages under the Dr. Savita Ben Ambedkar Inter-caste Marriage Scheme in 2006, offering financial help to couples who break caste walls. “The initial incentive was Rs. 50000, which rose to Rs. 5 lakh.
But Rajasthan later put conditions to curb an increase in the number of fake marriages and divorces under the inter-caste marriage scheme. “In a notification, the government said inter-caste marriages would be allowed only up to 35 years, and the couple would be entitled to only half the incentive money. The remaining would be kept as a fixed deposit in a joint account in a nationalised bank and could be claimed only after 8 years of marriage to ensure that the marriage was still on,” Outlook reported.
Only 5 per cent Indians have had an inter-caste marriage
A 2014 study revealed that only five per cent of Indians said they had married a person from a different caste. The study had surveyed 42,000 households and was seen as the first direct estimate of inter-caste marriages in India.
“The India Human Development Survey (IHDS), conducted by the National Council for Applied Economic Research (NCAER) and the University of Maryland, also reported that 30 per cent of rural and 20 per cent of urban households said they practised untouchability. The IHDS is the largest non-government, pan-Indian household survey. It covers over 42,000 households, representative by class and social group. Its findings, yet to be made public, were shared exclusively with The Hindu. When married women aged between 15 and 49 were asked if theirs was an inter-caste marriage, just 5.4 per cent said yes, the proportion being marginally higher for urban over rural India. There was no change in this proportion from the previous round of the IHDS (2004-05). Inter-caste marriages were rarest in Madhya Pradesh (under 1 per cent) and most common in Gujarat and Bihar (over 11 per cent),” reported The Hindu.
Caste-based rigidity in Indian marriages continues to have a tight grip on the social hierarchy in the country.
In states such as Jammu and Kashmir, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Meghalaya and Tamil Nadu, 95 per cent were found to have married within their own caste. States like Punjab, Sikkim, Goa and Kerala fared better, with 80 per cent marrying within their own caste, a 2005-06 report by National Family Health Survey (NFHS-III) said.
“There is no definite data available on inter-caste marriages since the Centre did not release the caste data from the Socio-Economic and Caste Census. One such study, by researchers K Das and others, analyses caste information of 43,102 ever-married couples as per the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-III) (2005-06) data. It pegs the percentage of inter-caste marriages in India at about 11 per cent,” Indian Express reported.
“A more recent paper (September 2017) by researchers at the Indian Statistical Institute, using data from the Indian Human Development Survey and National Sample Survey 2011-12, shows that the education level of people doesn’t have any direct co-relation with them choosing a partner from outside their own caste,” The report added.
Silver lining?
A pan-India poll titled “Pulse of the Nation,” conducted by Inshorts, an online news application, captured the views of 1.3 lakh netizens on marriage ‘to understand the changing opinions of millennials about the institution of Indian marriages.’
“In the survey, 8 out of 10 Indian citizens did not mind inter-caste marriages with over 70 per cent males saying that they do not think their partners should change their maiden names. Interestingly, more than 50 per cent respondents were from tier 2 and 3 cities,” Indiatimes reported.