While the farmers of North India are descending on the national capital, Delhi demanding a change to farm laws, the farmers of Mandya in Karnataka are walking for a different cause altogether. Not a guaranteed minimum crop price. Not loan waivers. Not doubling farmers incomes. What they want are brides for their farmer sons!

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And the protest march that began this week from the little known village of Anchedoddi in Mandya district and will culminate at the  Male Mahadeshwara Hill shrine, is to seek the divine intervention of Lord Shiva to convince parents to marry their daughters off to the sons of farmers. All, single, and available!

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The walk to the hill shrine is an age-old practice in South Karnataka  followed by thousands of people who make the annual trek up the steep hills of the MM Hills in Chamarajanagar before the Mahatma Shivaratri festival.

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This time, under the sage advice of the village elders, the unmarried young men of Anchedoddi have started the Padayatra from their village. Their only prayer - that every eligible son of a farmer gets a bride. Most of the young men in these Mandya villages have already crossed the marriageable age, with the parents of the young women in agreement that farmers' sons were not husband material.

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The girls' parents would rather their daughters were married to anyone except the sons of farmers as they have witnessed the ups and downs and the financial crunch faced by agriculturists, owing to erratic weather. They wish their daughters to be settled in cities than the villages, no matter what the income of their sons-in-laws.

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A few years ago, before the implementation of various drinking water schemes, the parents were not marrying off their daughters to the young men of Gadag, Bagalkot, Bijapur, Koppal and surrounding districts as it was always left to women to collect drinking water in pots and walk several miles home.  

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Now that social stigma is witnessed in Mandya, the sugar bowl of South Karnataka, thanks to the construction of the KRS dam. This problem is persisting in several taluks in Mandya, Mysore and Chamarajanagar and consequently, where every village now has unmarried youths in big numbers. This was in contrast to the situation that prevailed a couple of decades ago when farmers were marrying off their daughters to the sons of fellow ryots.

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Recently, the over aged 'boys' had appealed to the state government to announce a special reward of Rs 5 lakh to any girl who comes forward to marry a farmer. The youngsters had forwarded the memorandum to the chief minister and other ministers and requested them to view their plight on humanitarian grounds. The government already has a scheme in place that incentivizes marrying young men and women who belong to the scheduled castes in a bid to promote inter-caste marriages. The Mandya singles club want a similar scheme to be extended to young women who marry single farmers

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Mahesh, a 28-year-old from Puttahalli in Mandya taluk, said the problems of the unmarried youths in villages are becoming a big social issue. This has resulted in an exodus of young people to the cities, who end up working as cab drivers, abandoning  their aged parents and leaving no one to tend to agriculture land. The number of eligible young women in villages is dropping too, as many of them have settled in cities. They have no qualms about marrying young men doing petty jobs in the cities but will not look twice at anyone involved in agriculture.  The parents of these young men have no idea how to change these mind-sets.

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In a heartfelt plea, one young man said: "We too want to marry and enjoy life. What can we do if people are not ready to marry off their daughters to boys like me. There's no demand for 'boys' over 30 years old! Not a single girl wants to live with boys like us who are settled in villages".

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Comedians will probably have a field day with the plight of the brideless farmers of Mandya, an unexpected social malaise that simply defies a solution!