Karnataka Chief Minister D K Shivakumar received a unique request during a recent open meeting to hear people’s grievances (Praja Seva) in Mysuru district’s Periyapatna town. A farmer sought the CM’s help to find a bride for himself and fellow farmers whose marriage proposals were being repeatedly rejected despite them owning land. The 30-something petitioner claimed some of them were even contemplating suicide. He sought a government scheme to incentivise marriage with farmers. The request was dismissed with a joke on ‘maduve bhagya’ (marriage guarantee) as the sixth welfare scheme of the Congress government, but it highlighted a broader socio-economic problem caused by the state’s rural distress and urban migration.
The issue is not new. Earlier this year, Kunigal MLA H D Ranganath had written to then CM Siddaramaiah on women’s reluctance to marry rural bachelors and sought incentives. Unmarried farmers in their 30s and 40s have formed forums in both the fertile southern districts and arid northern Karnataka to highlight their plight. It is not only a case of women being choosy. As education levels improve in rural areas, men and women are moving to cities in greater numbers to pursue non-farming careers. As a result, ancestral lands are now largely tended to by senior citizens. Where owning farmland was once a matter of social prestige, it is now a hurdle to personal progress as agriculture has steadily lost its sheen.
Extreme climate events have played a big role in the shift. Rainfall disruptions have led to crop losses, unstable incomes and piling debts in the country’s second-most drought-prone state. This year, farmers are bracing for another drought. Over the past three years, Karnataka has recorded 2,809 farmer suicides. Between 2011 and 2021, the flow of working-age people from the state’s villages to cities has increased sharply.
It is not that state’s sex ratio is skewed against finding ample matches. At 979 women per 1,000 men, it’s rural sex ratio is a far cry from Punjab’s (907) or Haryana’s (882), two agrarian states that have faced a shortage of brides due to the illegal practice of sex selection at birth. Brides have also been denied to families living in areas with water scarcity and lack of toilets. Until agricultural reforms stabilise the sector and make it more lucrative, young men may have to pay the price with bachelorhood.