And what’s ‘leftover’ exactly?

Leftover women. A term so derogatory and insulting that one squirms at its very mention. It’s a phenomenon that emerged out of China, when in 2007, the All-China Women’s Federation anointed unmarried women over the age of 27 as Sheng Nu or ‘leftover women’. Does such a parallel exist in India too?
Thankfully, we’ve don’t have such an official slur as yet but, yes, Indians do reserve the same disrespect and suspicion for women who don’t get married at the ‘right age’. That’s true of the hinterland as well as urban India. Komal Yadav, a 38-year-old executive with an auto major in Chennai, says her status as an unmarried woman forced her to relocate from her home town in Indore. “I was content working there but it increasingly became difficult for me to socialize. My relatives didn’t have anything else to ask but why I wasn’t getting married,” she says. When a job offer came from Chennai two years back, she took it up as an escape. “Over the years, even my friends started keeping me out of their get-togethers. They felt I was incomplete and had nothing in common with their complete lives.”
Chennai, however, offered Yadav only a partial reprieve. “My colleagues don’t ask meddlesome questions and are very friendly in office but tend to distance themselves from me at social gatherings if accompanied by their wives,” she adds.
While Yadav had only this social annoyance to deal with, 32-year-old Anju Kohli’s non-marital status almost makes her feel as if she’s afflicted with a malaise. “The ostracism I face is not funny. A teenaged niece told me a few months back that her parents had asked her not to bond with me much as they feared she too would end up being unattached due to my evil influence. My cousins keep fixing matches for me because they say Indian society is unsafe for unmarried women,” says this assistant professor in a Lucknow college. She however, doesn’t intend to tie the knot till she finishes her Ph D. “It’s a decision I’ve taken for my professional growth and I don’t see why it should make me a pariah,” laments Kohli.
Education, professional growth and increased freedom to exercise their individuality — these hallmarks of a modern Indian woman have also changed the very concept of marriage, says Dr Jitendra Nagpal, incharge of the Institute of Mental Health and Life Skills Promotion at Moolchand Medcity, Delhi. “Urban educated women are an extremely empowered category and it’s common to come across women in their 30s pursuing higher education, not just in metros but even in small towns,” he says. Even those from moffusil towns are very clear about what they want from life, he says. “They want to build their careers and marry only when they are ready for it, not to fulfill a social obligation.” But he rues the fact that even as parents are giving their daughters the power of education and the freedom to choose their professions, they are uneasy when it comes to marriage. Indian society’s preconceived ideas and nervousness about the right age for a girl to get married are deep-rooted social truths that go back centuries.
Rama Rao, a 45-year-old professor of sociology in a reputed university in Karnataka, says that it stems from the age-old belief that a woman’s sexuality needs to be reined in by marrying her off early. “It’s an important trait of a male-dominated society and that’s what we are even today.”
The very fact that Rao and the other women quoted here wanted to remain anonymous is an important pointer towards society’s attitude towards unmarried women. Rao didn’t share her reasons for remaining single, but says she had to face a lot of flak for not getting hitched. It didn’t matter that she was a successful professional. “It will take a few generations for our society to become comfortable with women who don’t see marriage as an end in itself,” adds Rao.