Drowning in Debt? Sell Your Wife!

What do you do when you're a farmer drowning in so much debt that you've already sold your home and your land? Why, sell your wife for marriage or prostitution to the man you're indebted to. Duh! And if you live in India and you're caught selling a human being you claim to be in a committed relationship with like a piece of property, don't worry. The police will just wag their fingers and you and tell you to try and be a good boy next time. Because she's not being raped if it helped you save your farm, right?

This actually happened to a woman named Saryu Devi. Her husband had taken out multiple loans that he couldn't pay. After selling off most of his property, he agreed to sell Saryu to an older man for 8000 Rs, or about $170. When her "new husband" brought her to the courthouse to sign their marriage license, she escaped and ran into a court room yelling for help. When the police got the story straight as to what happened, did they charge Saryu's husband with a crime? No. Did they offer Saryu help of any kind? No.

Instead, "The shocked judge then directed the woman to be sent to a Jhansi police station where she was asked to leave with her husband. The husband was warned not to resort to such acts again."

A warning, and that's it? He tried to sell his wife, not some fake Rolexes. And this is not the first case of a wife being sold like chattel by her husband in order to pay off a debt. If Indian authorities' method of dealing with this issue is to pat the husbands on the head and tell them to be good boys, while sending their wives back to possibly be sold again, then life is not looking good for debtors' wives.

This form of human trafficking -- husbands selling wives to pay off debts -- is especially interesting because it's closely related to a seemingly unrelated issue: climate change. The reason many farmers are in debt in the first place is not because they're drug addicts or irresponsible with money, but because climate change has caused several years of droughts in some parts of India. Each time there is a drought, the farmer borrows more money to feed his family, hoping that the next year will be a good year. It used to be unheard of to have more than a couple years of drought in a row. But climate change caused up to eight or nine years of droughts in some parts of India, leaving farmers with debts they can't pay. Combine that with corruption at almost every level of infrastructure in India and a deeply patriarchal culture, and bam -- you've got a blue light special on wives.

To address this problem, you obviously need to address a lot of even bigger issues, like environmental degradation, poverty, corruption, and patriarchy. But in the meantime, the Indian police could at least make sure men know that they can't sell their wives to pay off their debts. And they can make sure Indian women have a place to go to seek help if their husband does try and sell them. Because selling another human being isn't a "boys will be boys" finger-wag-worthy infraction. It's slavery. And it's illegal around the world, including in India.

Photo credit: jazz defo