Till debt do us part

Across Mahbubnagar and Anantapur districts in Andhra Pradesh, thousands of marriages have been called off, delayed, disrupted and shifted. Countless families hit by the agricultural crisis, and then by drought and migrations, have seen wedding plans fall apart. Noted journalist P. SAINATH writes about the deep sense of humiliation villagers feel.

THE house is fully decked up, as you would expect it to be in a home readying for a marriage. All the bright colours and paraphernalia that go with a village wedding are in evidence. There is just one thing missing. The marriage party itself. Except for one old woman left behind, the house seems abandoned.

Gangappa, temple priest in this village of Mushtikovila, smiles. "Oh yes, there is a wedding, but not here. Almost no one can afford to have one in the village anymore. Holding it here means inviting at least your caste group. But our financial crisis is so bad, people cannot do even that. So they go out and try to have the wedding at some ashram for free. Or at least cheaply at a temple - other than the one in their own village."

It is the same across Mahbubnagar and Anantapur districts this year. Thousands of marriages have been called off, delayed, disrupted or shifted. Countless families hit by the agricultural crisis and then by migrations and drought have seen wedding plans fall apart. Mushtikovila is in the C. K. Palli mandal of Anantapur. Many villages here and elsewhere have not seen a traditional wedding for three years or more.

"What do we do?" asks Gangappa. "There have been no good crops for three years. When there are crops, we get very bad prices for them. So, many marriages have been affected due to the financial crisis crushing people."

"Take this house you are looking at. They hired a jeep, packed 12 relatives into it and went off to a temple a few miles from here. That way, at least, they save some money."

"It is the older women who love these occasions most," says a neighbour. "But they had to leave this lady behind." She stands despondent within the house, not stepping beyond the doorway.

Most of those dependent on agriculture in Andhra Pradesh have seen their lives worsen these past three years. Beginning in the early 1990s, millions have been badly hit by a lack of credit; by poor prices for their produce; by the import of palm oil; the collapse of employment and food-for-work programmes; crop failure, rising debt and a loss of food security. A drought in some districts has sharpened the fallout of these disasters.

The village wedding is one of many institutions severely affected. Dogged by debt, most landless and poor farmers are unable to hold marriages in their villages as before.

In Kalyandurg mandal, Kurlapalli village on the Karnataka border has seen 25 weddings this year. "They were all held at the ashram of Bambam Baba," says Kishtappa, a dhobi here.

"My sister was married there this March. We tried four years to have the wedding in the village and failed. She had seven possible alliances. In one case, we reached a settlement and agreed on Rs. 25,000 as dowry. But this crisis meant we could neither raise nor borrow the money. Ten years ago, we could have. Not in this period. That alliance was therefore cancelled and her marriage put off again. She was also getting older. So this year we went to the ashram and got it done."

S. Ramappa is a self-employed oil mechanic in the same village. "My son's wedding was hit. Mind you, we are the boy's side of the alliance. Yet, we agreed to have the event at the ashram. It was clear the girl's side could afford nothing. And neither could we. So we mutually agreed on the ashram. There would have been no marriage otherwise."

"The ashram gave us a couple of saris, and the mangalsutram. We could not afford even that. I have had no work at all for a long time."

Since not all the well-endowed ashrams have been as generous, there has been a rush to Bambam Baba's campus. "He conducts weddings for free," says Kishtappa. "So our related expenses came down. We are dying of debt here."

The cash crunch means the risk of lending to the poor becomes too high. "This crisis has also finished several smaller moneylenders," says ex-sarpanch K. Ramesh of Ganpur in Mahbubnagar. "They have no chance of getting back the money they have loaned during the past three seasons."

"My wedding was called off at the last minute," says Maniamma. She lives in the Lambada tanda (colony) of Ramaraopalli in the same mandal. "The preparations had begun and we had even spent a lot on that. But my parents found it impossible to raise the Rs. 20,000 dowry they had agreed on. So my wedding was scrapped."

In the same tanda, both Gori and Honi had struck alliances for their daughters. "But this season, we got no work at all," says Honi. "So we could not meet the expenses or even a token dowry." The marriages are off.

Their neighbour Chavdi thought she could raise her daughter's dowry. "It was only Rs. 10,000. Yet, we failed. And all our relatives are in the same state and cannot help us." So the alliance came unstuck.

Back in Anantapur, the temples are busy. Gollapalli village in Pennukonda mandal, for instance, has held its weddings at an outside temple. "Even people with over 20 acres are opting for temple marriages," says B. Adinarayana Reddy, president of the primary agricultural cooperative (PAC) society here. Five debt- ridden farmers committed suicide in Gollapalli during the past year. Four took their lives within 10 to 15 days of each other. Almost everybody is broke.

"A temple wedding costs one-tenth of what a village wedding would," says Reddy. Hence the scramble for ashrams and temples. "We have had no wedding of normal scale for this village in five or six years." In the C. K. Palli mandal, school children said they had never seen a wedding in their village.

Mulkunur village has seen just one traditional wedding in the village in six years. "That was in the family of the panchayat ex-president," says a farmer. "And he is a landlord owning 200 acres."

The very practice of cooking for a marriage feast is in decline. "It is extraordinary for village weddings," says retired school teacher P. Gangi Reddy of Enumulavaripalli village in Mudigubba mandal. "But families are taking just a few guests to a cheap hotel. Even that expense hurts them." So preparing a feast, though integral to village weddings, is out for most families.

Is it a change in trends? Do people just want to do things differently? In every village, people ridicule the idea.

"All villagers want to have weddings to which they invite their own caste and other neighours," says Gangappa in Mushtikovila. "They feel a sense of loss or shame when unable to do so." All the villages we visit echo that sentiment. Many feel a deep sense of humiliation.

Though a temple priest himself, Gangappa does not attribute the rise in mandir and ashram weddings to religiosity. "It is entirely due to the crushing financial crisis. Take those two or three families that went from here to hold their marriages at the Puttaparthi ashram (of Satya Sai Baba). It was not an urge of bhakti but a lack of shakti that took them there. No one has anything to spend. Our economy is in a shambles."

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