Things are bad folks…folks are out of work..houses are getting forclosed on..forum trolls are getting testy…

But I guess there’s always folks that are doing a little worse than you...Guys in India are selling there wives to pay off debts..Now last time I read the Citizen Times ( which is hardly ever)  The most anybody was willing to sacrifice for there debts was a flat screen TV and a goat and they wanted top dollar….so I guess in comparison things are good here in Appalachia..

Farmers sell wives to pay debts in rural India

 
By Sara Sidner
CNN

BUNDELKHAND, India (CNN)—The cattle slowly drag the old-fashioned plow as a bone-thin farmer walks behind, encouraging them to move faster with a series of yelps.
Drought, debt and desperation have pushed some farmers in rural India to sell their wives.

Drought, debt and desperation have pushed some farmers in rural India to sell their wives.

It is a scene from times of old, but still the way many farmers operate in rural India, where the harvest often determines feast or famine.

The region is called Bundelkhand, spanning the two northern Indian states of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. It is here that drought, debt and desperation have pushed people to extremes.

To survive the bad years, some farmers say they turn to the “Paisawalla”—Hindi for the rich man who lends money. Farmers say the loans from these unofficial lenders usually come with very high interest.

When the interest mounts up, lenders demand payment. Some farmers work as bonded laborers for a lifetime to pay off their debts. Others here say because of years of little rain and bad harvests they are forced to give money lenders whatever they ask for.

Sometimes that includes their wives.

“It happens sometimes when somebody borrows money,” says a farmer’s wife who did not want to be identified. She should know, considering what police say she told them. She said a rich man bought her from her husband.

“He did buy me,” she says. “That’s why he told me he bought me.”

For 30 days she says the man forced her to live with him.

When her case drew public attention, she retracted her police report and her husband took her back.

I think tip-toeing around it minimizes the reality of it. SLAVERY, is everyone familiar with the word? OK, moving on, in areas of the world everything including family under a mans roof are considered his possessions. I am surprised that sons turned over/sold for labor and daughters sold off or married off into servitude/slavery/bondage weren’t included in this story.

It is incredibly sad that this exists and even sadder that I am sure some readers feel America should jump right in and fix it. Have we not learned that we are not the great teachers and our way be it left or right is not always (rarely) the best way for other societies. I’m not offering a solution here but simply pointing out a bit of reality.

Now that I have covered being real, lets talk rupees. How much is another mans wife going for and is it a rental as the article suggested or a purchase? Would you really want the woman based on the description of the emaciated man, she can’t be terribly physically desirable. Maybe the implication of sex was inaccurate and she was really more like a house keeper. I don’t know about men in other countries but having 1 wife is all I really need or can handle. However, I suppose if you have the money in a society that pre brakes the women’s spirit… What, any man that denies that they have had a multiple sex partner fantasy is lying.

Well that was sad and perversely amusing. Let us hope for good harvests with little blight.

I would bet money that my husband would happily sell me at this point. What a downward spiral this recession has initiated. Then again, I wonder how much I could get for him…...hmmmmm

I think tip-toeing around it minimizes the reality of it. SLAVERY, is everyone familiar with the word?

We Americans are used to being slaves in one sense or another..When Lincoln wrote the “We don’t need no stinking slaves” paper.. he originally wanted to abolish wage labor too..He knew that there was just as much room for human abused under a wage labor system…

It a way it’s worse in that if you own a slave and they get sick ..you take care of them so they get well and can continue to serve..with wage labor most the time you get sick..you get kicked out to the curb with a gutted workmen comp system..if yopu stay sick..they take your house, your car and your eating pressed turkey in a homeless line..living under the bridge..

I say bring slavery back..at least we’ll have healthcare..