This article presents in-depth ethnographic evidence of women’s lived experience of arranged marriages and love marriages, their agency and constraints in a working class neighbor hood of New Delhi.

Patharia, a village-situated in the Bundhelkund region is stark contrast to other villages. Inhabited by the Bedia tribe, a part of the vimukta jati where adult members in the family never worked and depended solely on the earnings of the young girl involved in prostitution.

Reproductive health [1] practices among Muslim women in India have been little researched perhaps because of the widespread notion regarding the tight Islamic control over sexual behaviour and the sanctions against contraceptive use.