Website to promote dowry-free marriages is back

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The website, launched by the Kerala Mahila Samakhya Society to promote the campaign against the dowry system, www.dowryfreemarriage.org, has been revived after a brief shutdown.In its upscale version, which also changed the domain extension from .COM to .ORG, the website has a discussion forum to moot dowry-related issues and also provides the facility to register for dowry-free marriages.The site is an offshoot of the Society’s ongoing campaign against the malaise of dowry system, said Seema Bhaskar, State Project Director. “Although the Dowry Prohibition Act has been in existence from 1961, the actualisation of its goals is steeped in problems. Ground realities are in stark contrast to the picture of Kerala painted by conventional social indices. In the status study done by the society in the Malabar area, it was found that the dowry system was one of the major social issues which tore at the social fabric with a host of spin-offs such as domestic violence, destitution of women and children etc.As we stepped up the campaign in Malabar and Nilambur Municipality in particular, we took a travelling theatre across the region in addition to a slew of educational awareness programmes. The strides that we were able to make through these initiatives prompted us to create the website that would facilitate a constant build up on the campaign,” she said.The Website, launched on March 8, 2010, on the International Women’s Day, aims to further the  Society’s mission of educational empowerment of women.As part of its revival, a discussion of the Issues of Unwed Mothers was initiated in the site in the last week of August. The details of the  interventions made by the Society in the districts of Wayanad, Kasargod, Palakkad and Thiruvananthapuram, following discussions at the government- level, were posted in the Forum. Visitors can post their comments and express opinions. The Website is designed in a user-friendly manner and aims to become a reference point for the activities of the Society’s campaign against dowry, said Seema Bhaskar.The matrimony registrations made on the site have gone up encouragingly since its inception, she said.“We have already had two couples who met on the site and are happily married. We attended both the weddings which were special moments for us. It was gratifying to see young people who believed in the same ideals unite,” she said.