Indian man marries three times to deal with drought

A man has been forced to marry three times to deal with the drought in villages in Maharashtra's Thane district. Sixty-five-year-old Ramchandra (name changed to protect identity), a resident of Dengalmal village, on a hilltop in Shahapur taluka, said his first wife was ill and cannot go far away to fetch water for the family of 13, while his second wife was weak.

Ramchandra's family includes three sons, their wives and three grandsons; his three daughters have got married and now live with their husbands. He said he first married when he was 20 and has six children from her. He married again as his first wife fell sick, hoping that she would take care of the household work. But as she was too weak and could not handle the workload, he went in for the third marriage 10 years back.



He justified his marriages, claiming that in a year, they faced a problem of water scarcity for six months in their village. They have to often traverse one and a half kilometres to a well in a nearby village, and sometime to the Bhatsa river three km away. Villagers initially opposed his marriages as they suspected that he was doing it for sexual pleasure.

Hussain Shaikh, a villager, said, "Earlier, we opposed his move for a third marriage, but later we realized that whatever he has done was right, as his third wife now takes care of the family's water arrangements." Sakri Shende, a 70-year-old woman from the village who spends nearly five hours in transporting water with her son's wife, said, "We normally find Ramchandra's third wife carrying water. Only when she falls sick, other family members come to the well for water."