Extramarital affairs major cause of strife between spouses

NT NETWORK
Posted on 2009-01-05
PANAJI - Family life in the state of Goa, which is known to be family oriented and a relatively conservative place despite its seemingly westernised and open mien, is slowly showing its darker side and representative figures underline this, according to the chief counsellor of the All India Women’s Conference – Goa unit, Ms Madhuri Rao.
“At least 70 per cent of the cases of strife between spouses referred are due to extramarital affairs and out of those at least 20 per cent are of bigamous marriages out of the around 130 cases per year, both from rural as well as urban areas,” Ms Rao, who is accredited by state level authorities, says and further informs that added to this number are at least 50 follow up cases per year.
She, however, says that arriving at a solution to this especially from the women’s side is a difficult and uphill task.
She also laments that in case of divorce, division of property happens only on paper and most wives do not get anything. “Women have to fight continuously for their rights and even maintenance is a problem with only around 3 to 4 per cent actually getting a division of property,” she points out.
Explaining the increasing trends of people coming forward to report these extramarital affairs, she says: “Now people are speaking about such things and women do not accept such behaviour from their spouses. Earlier, women were much more accepting,” she points out.
“This problem is across communities and also encompasses the rural-urban divide. In fact today the rural women are more willing to speak out as they are not so worried about reputation. Earlier, economic dependence was also a big factor.” Ms Rao informs that the All India Women’s Conference has two more centres at Vasco and Dabolim apart from the Panaji centre and adds that she visits these centres as the resource person, though she says for most dicey cases she calls the affected parties to the Panaji centre.
She says that because of the success of the centre in finding solutions to such cases people are being referred to it by previous clients, social workers, police and judges. Delving deeper into the subject she says: “Many of these affairs are in-office liaisons and also many take place as the husbands are working abroad.
Also, problems arise among youth who marry for love as after some time the glow is gone. In some cases they are already interested in someone else but get married to some other person due to family pressure. Unfortunately, problems arise after the marriage.”
She also informs that many a times problems between spouses arise due to affairs with servants or even labourers on site. Giving an example of a bigamous marriage she recounts: “There is a case wherein two women were married to a man and both marriages took place in the same taluka and in the same sub-registrar’s office. After the case went on for some time the husband died but the case is still on to prove who is the actual wife.”
Ms Rao argues that there is no penalty that is normally enforced on such marriages “so people can get away,” and adds, “also proof becomes a problem and ego comes in the way of acceptance.”