Since 2015, more than 11,000 women married to Indians abroad have approached India’s foreign missions with complaints of domestic crises. Many cases involve allegations of fraud and abuse. But in most instances, overseas officials are able to do only so much to help.

Polygyny or the practice of having more than one wife is legal in India only for Muslims, but National Family Health Survey (NFHS) data shows it is almost as prevalent in other communities, though on the decline in all.

It was the tragic death by suicide that has laid bare the daily trauma of the three sisters from a landless household married to an affluent family with demands for dowry from impoverished parents.

The journey from unemployment or employment to self-employment is liberating in multiple ways for the Indian woman.

An Act to protect the rights of married Muslim women and to prohibit divorce by pronouncing talaq by their husbands and to provide for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto. 

This Working Paper embodies the results of the Kerala Migration Survey (KMS) 2011. It is the fifth in the series of comprehensive studies on international and internal migration from Kerala being undertaken by the Centre for Development Studies since 1998.