Maldivians in Kerala, India
By Paul
Maldivian men come shopping for brides in a big way in Kerala where women outnumber men (1,058 to 1,000) and it is a big business for the brokers in the poor fishing hamlets of Poonthura, Bheemapally and Vallakkadavu. “We don’t encourage such marriages. But we are helpless when the parents certify that the prospective groom is decent and capable of looking after their daughter,” A Saifudheen Haji, president of Vallakkadavu Jama’at Committee, said. “Some 100 marriages were registered in my area alone in the past ten years. Some poor families receive regular remittances from the Maldives to sustain themselves but some marriages have ended in tragedy,” he said.Since the late eighties, people from the archipelago of over 300,000 inhabitants, whose per capita income is four times more, come to Kerala in large numbers for leisure, treatment or education of their children and make it their second home. At least 5,000 families have made the state’s capital Thiruvananthapuram their second home. More than half of some 100,000 medical tourists who arrived in Kerala last year were from the Maldives and there are daily flights from Thiruvananthapuram to Male, just half-an-hour flight away.
-Drive against ‘Mali’ marriages launched
The story is blown out of proportion- as is typical in India. Anyway the issues are real and sad.
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