Economics and natural justice works for women
Published by Yazad Jal July 8th, 2004 in Economics, Culture and SocietyLibertarian principles sometimes lead to “icky” solutions for certain problems. Let’s take sex selection of foetuses as an example. A libertarian would not advocate banning the practice, although it leads to a skewed male-female ratio and aggravates many social problems. I’d say “let it be” — no need for regulation here.
Those who disagree, please read this before furiously typing out your comments!
Amrut Raval, a 23-year old youth in the Upkhal village in Vijapur taluka in Mehsana, was forced to do the unthinkable in his community. Not able to find a girl in his community, his family was forced to cough up Rs 30,000 and buy him a bride from Ankleshwar!It is not just Raval. More and more boys in this North Gujarat district, which is notorious for its preference for the male child and has the lowest sex-ratio of 798 girls per 1000 boys in Gujarat, are now at the receiving end of this social menace when they come of age.
(snip)
The newly-wed wife of Vishnu Patel, a youth in Kanoda village in Becharji, left him after three months of marriage. “Patel had paid Rs 30,000 to the bride’s parents but then her parents asked her to get some gold ornaments too. The boy’s family obliged but the girl decamped with the jewellery in a matter of days”, Sudha said.
Simple principles of free market economics (an important component of libertarianism) have come to help here. Did someone say “invisible hand”?
While it may be cheap to talk about price of brides and some might even say this is “selling women” — for me it’s really just a role reversal. Earlier boys were sold; now girls are. Girls have become a scarce commodity and therefore command a higher price. The free market is not an aribiter of morality, it’s often just a messenger which brings the inherent values present in society to the surface.
This is going to have many repurcussions, some undoubtedly postive for the status of women. Where many laws and scores of do-good initiatives have not succeeded, simple economics seems to have made a dent. I’m going to wait and watch.
Update: Jivha has posted on the bride buying issue as well. And it seems to be prevalent in other areas of India. He quotes this piece from the New Indian Express.
I notice that there’s a price diffrential. Gujju brides are 6 times costlier!
9 Responses to “Economics and natural justice works for women”
- 1 Trackback on Jul 8th, 2004 at 11:23 am
A-ha. I see we both noticed the arbitrage opportunity here ;-)
Yes. Maybe we both should dump our jobs and set up a hedge fund. We could concentrate on emerging trends like these ;-)
Yazad - are you stating that instead of trying to curb social evils by law, we better wait for the free-market force to slowly get bigger and bigger and tilt it the other way???
Looks like really convoluted logic to me…
“Where many laws and scores of do-good initiatives have not succeeded, simple economics seems to have made a dent.”
How did you come to the conclusion that laws and do-good initiatives did not succeed??? And this thing did???
What is likely to irk most people about your market analysis, is that it does not solve the problem NOW! ofcourse no interventionist policy will either, but it does give solace to the souls of India’s emerging class of left liberals that ’something is being done about it’. Ofcourse results are not to be considered at all, the world is not a perfect place and these things are bound to have some pitfalls, but ’sarkar iske bare mein kuch to kar rahi hai’. I’m sure some enraged feminist will demand legislation banning bride-price soon.
On a contrarian note, the instituition of bride-price or mehr has not really helped the cause of women in Islam, which treats marriage more contractually than any other religion I know of.
Swami, Yes. Social “evils” are rarely solved by simply passing a law. If that were true, we’d see no child marriages and no dowry murders, etc.
Same logic leads me to the conclusion that laws and do-good initiatives have not worked. I work in the NGO sector and I’ve seen some of this upfront ;-)
I’m not saying that the free market has solved this problem, just that the news reports show a role reversal — which has made some dent in society.
even though the ideal goal of law might be to “solve” social evils, i would consider a law successful if it manages to curb the evil to acceptable limits..
to do away with such laws, i dont think is practical…
a hedge fund for women sounds like an excellent idea.
Can the same logic be applied to t slavery - if an individual wants to sell himself for the rest of his/her natural life - in return for money settled on his/her family, and food, clothes and shelter would there be an reason for the Government to stop that transaction?
Harini
はじめまして、英語が不自由なことを先に失礼します。
そもそもが女性の人権など存在しないにもかかわらず人身売買だの奴隷だなどと批判するほうが筋違いなのです。多額の持参金を払って焼き殺される花嫁が存在する現実を鑑みれば先進国並みの女性の権利とまでは行かなくてもまずまずの男性側の譲歩を引き出せたと言えます
奴隷とは何をもって奴隷というのか？女性を武器にして王侯貴族並みの贅沢を享受してやれ自由がない愛がないと嘆いていたダイアナのような女性を言うのですか？
仮にインドの性比率がもっと歪んで100人の男性に対して一人の女性が実現してマハラジャに金で買われ先進国の女性すら実現不可能の贅沢生活を手に入れたとしてそれが”奴隷”ですか？私は日本人ですがインドの男が嫁不足で苦しんでいるのは自業自得だと思いますよ
I’d say “let it be” — no need for regulation here.
私も大賛成ですよ