Source: news.bbc.co.uk
BIHAR, INDIA, June 15, 2010: In India, where traditionally boys have been preferred over girls, a village in Bihar state has been setting an example by planting trees to celebrate the birth of a girl child. In Dharhara village, Bhagalpur district, families plant a minimum of 10 trees whenever a girl child is born. And this practice is paying off, financing the dowry and lessening the worries families have when trying to marry a daugther.
Nikah Kumari, 19, is all set to get married in early June. The would-be groom is a state school teacher chosen by her father, Subhas Singh. Mr Singh is a small-scale farmer with a meager income, but he is not worried about the high expenses needed for the marriage ceremony. For, in keeping with the village tradition, he had planted 10 mango trees the day Nikah was born. The girl and the trees were nurtured over the years and today both are grown up. “Today that day has come for which we had planted the trees. We’ve sold off the fruits of the trees for three years in advance and got the money to pay for my daughter’s wedding,” Mr. Singh told the BBC. “The trees are our fixed deposits,” he said.
The villagers have been planting trees for generations. Mr. Singh paid for the weddings of his three daughters after selling fruits of trees he had planted at the time of their birth. “One medium-size mango orchard yealds around US$ 4,245 every season. These trees have great commercial value and they are a big support for us at the time of our daughter’s marriage,” he says. The villagers say they save a part of the money earned through the sale of fruits every year in a bank account opened in their daughter’s name.
“This is our way of meeting the challenges of dowry, global warming and female feticides. There has not been a single incident yet of female feticide or dowry death in our village,” Subhendu Kumar Singh says.