Non Resident Indian Wives

Social Issues Gender issues

The problem of non-resident Indian (NRI) women trapped in situations of domestic torture has gained an urgent edge in recent years.

Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) released figures that show that one NRI wife calls back home every eight hours i.e 3 calls daily, seeking rescue from a domestic nightmare.
Between January 2015 and November 2017, the MEA alone received 3,328 complaints.
The actual number of victims would be much larger and include those who have not sought help from family or official agencies, or have turned only to family.
Studies show that Punjab, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Gujarat register the highest number of complaints.
The complaints range from abandonment after marriage (either in India or abroad), bigamous unions (the man already has a wife abroad), false information about the man’s job and earnings, harassment for dowry, domestic violence, and ex-parte divorce based on false documents.
These cases predominantly are from the UK, US and West Asia where most of the Indian diaspora is based.
Most of the complaints from the US are from the wives who are H4 visa holders, financially dependent on husbands who are holders of the H1B visa.
Women holding H4 visas were not allowed to work until the Obama administration allowed them to apply for work permits in 2015.
However, given the current political dispensation in the US, this is not easy.

One is the anxiety of Indian parents to marry off daughters, even highly educated and potentially economically independent ones, in the belief that an unmarried adult daughter is a social embarrassment.
Second is the near-obsessive aspiration to seek “greener pastures” abroad whether through marriage or emigration.
Other factors include reluctance to probe too closely into the potential bridegroom’s antecedents for fear of angering the “boy’s side” and the general that a wife is necessary to run the house and “look after” the husband’s parents or family.
Women are not really treated as a life partner as much as cheap domestic labour and caregiver in foreign countries.

The Indian government needs to be more proactive rather than wait for complaints to deal with the issue. e.g The Punjab state government has set up police stations to handle such complaints.
As of now, one of the main obstacles faced by the law and order agencies is that it is very difficult if not impossible to get the accused to come to India and face legal prosecution.
A committee set up by the present government has recommended the cancellation of the passports of NRIs found harassing or deserting their wives, inclusion of cases of domestic violence in the scope of extradition treaties, and increase in financial assistance provided to the women by Indian missions abroad.