Dowry is a Serious Economic Violence

This book is about the prevailing practices of dowry, its mechanisms, and the dowry laws as they exist in India. It argues that the practice of dowry is evolving in the commercialized neoliberal era, while the law has failed to keep pace with the socio-economic changes. Dowry, as it is practiced today, involves gruesome economic violence, including extortion, blackmail, holding women hostage for extracting money, and exploitation of women and their families. The current legal framework ignores this triad of oppression consisting of compulsive, arbitrary dowry demands, coercion, and dowry-related violence. Therefore, this work suggests a multipronged approach to ending the culture of dowry violence with impunity. It recommends fixing the accountability of the perpetrators of violence, developing strategies to support the survivors, transforming the patriarchal culture, and rethinking the socio-legal discourse surrounding dowry violence at the national and global level.