Sunday, August 17, 2008

Dowry Today, Alimony Tomorrow

India, they say- is shining. Yes, in more ways than one, India is indeed shining. Look at the phenomenal increase in the number of new jobs created. Look at the large no. of employable MBA degree holders. Malls and multiplexes, McDonalds and CafĂ© Coffee Day are ‘normal hangouts’ on all the popular roads of urban India. Everybody, including autowallahs and taxi-drivers are earning money. In short, people have money today, a lot more than they had about 7 years ago in early 2000. Today even a 22-23 year old graduate can easily earn a reasonable sum i.e. more than 2.4 lacs per annum with a decent educational qualification. Women are getting equal opportunities in the career market today, not to mention equivalent salaries and lesser taxes.(Marry a working woman, I’d suggest :))
With such a rosy picture, it has become easier for the young moneyed to invest a good amount of time and money in courting potential partners and finding a suitable match for themselves. With good education, a ‘stable job’ and a reasonably steady financial condition arises the desire to ‘settle-down’-early. The marriageable age, esp. for young men, seems to have reduced because of this, though even today the educated Indian girl is generally married off at an average age of 24-26 years of age. Be it arranged marriage or a love-marriage, marriages in India still involve a certain level of parental intervention, which, I may add is not bad. It is good, as long as the parents do not play spoilsport and indulge in the soft-dowry game. The dowry system, as it exists in today’s society has mellowed down in the educated households, but-it exists. Down south, in states like Kerala, people still prefer to send their girl to a new home with substantial amount of gold(100 tolas of dowry gold is commonplace there). Up north, well-off people ‘gift’ their daughters with the keys of a new flat, or a new car. Other families across India also do their best in terms of showering their little girls with ‘presents’.
But why give dowry, even when the woman is educated enough and can fend for herself? Alas! Parents, like us are the victims of peer pressure too. This ‘Voluntary Dowry Scheme’ is, more often than not, an effort on their part to show the world, that they too have power- money power. Their gifts are a reflection of the amount of this power they wield. Their gifts are given out of hope that it’s a one-time investment, that their children too will be married happily-ever-after like most couples their age. A good number of these marriages will last till the end and it is my heartfelt wish that they will. But, the truth of new age urban marriages must be faced- there is a steady increase in the number of divorce petitions over the past decade, the maximum number in the later half of this decade. Here, let me take a moment to point out that though divorce-rates are going up, there are many educated families who do not entertain dowry requests/expectations of any kind, and the wife in question is living a happy married life.

Why the change? Why the increase in probability of divorce? Shouldn’t prosperity and the virility of youth result in harmonious accompaniment? Perhaps a sneak-peek into the past will answer our million dollar question. Why did so many couples, who married in the late 70’s and early eighties stick together for so long? One might blame it on the initial years they spent in a conservative-rural setup; but a better understanding of their socio-economic condition reveals more than meets the eye. Most individuals(read men) were burdened by family responsibility of various kinds. The responsibilities varied from sending a large chunk of their salary to their parents in the village to taking loans for their sisters wedding (which also included dowry I presume). The percentage of employed women, though increasing was still very small. In short, people were not prosperous and lived a frugal lifestyle, with more focus on the essentials and an occasional spending on the luxuries of life. Saving preceded investment and even popular avenues of investment like Bonds, Fixed Deposits and National Savings Certificate were savings oriented. The market was full of local goods, and the popular names of those times were Raymond, Bombay Deing and Vimal. I remember grown-ups saying that Bata shoes were the best- they lasted longest. Even these were luxuries for the majority of the generation that grew up spending most of their childhood without owning a pair of slippers. The very children who risked an animated scolding if they lost a pencil, who completed their entire education with not more than three ‘fountain-pens’, this era was a fresh breath of a good life.
Public transport was commonly used and many people were proud owners of Kinetic Hondas and Bajaj scooters, owning a Fiat Padmini or a Maruti 800 meant that you were rich. This was also the time when queues were ubiquitous. You spent time queuing with complete strangers in almost everything ranging from bank deposits, to train tickets, and even admissions to kindergarten. It might sound strange to us, but most folks have fond memories of some such queues in their life. (Of course they must have been in some horrid queues too!).
Public transport, queues and adversity meant that people were interdependent on each other and had to cooperate to get things done-unlike today, where we’d rather travel by car and have everything online by sitting in a corner, saving time and doing other important tasks. Let me illustrate this further. In the early days of T.V. watching T.V was a social activity, (people assembled to watch their favorite show at the enviable Onida-neighbor). As TV got cheaper and affordable, it became a private affair. Just one example of how a social activity became a private affair. The ubiquitous computer and the mobile phones are the chief culprits in the creation of today’s individualistic, independent citizen. (We are still interdependent on each other, but these devices offer a false sense of independence). In spite of considerable time saving devices which execute almost everything at the click of a mouse, today’s youth seem to be falling short of time- and patience.

The older generation experienced the diversity of adversity. They had to interact, cooperate and quarrel daily with myriad people in their bus/local train, unavoidable queues, had to bargain in crowded bazaars, but with every experience they were directly exposed to the diversity of people around them. On the contrary, the current generation lives the Uniformity of prosperity. They all have similar jobs, live in similar houses, drive the same cars, hang out at the same malls, pubs and gyms and hardly ever have to interact with people outside their circle, except on their mobilephones or watching them through the comforts of their company bus, helmet visors or comfortable cars. And with uniformity, people get bored. Life becomes insipid and uninspiring. It is this boredom that drives most people to take up Latin dance classes, guitar classes, learning a foreign language- mind you that these activities are usually taken up, not out of passion but of boredom and an avenue to keep the mind occupied. If passion is missing, the person keeps jumping to a new avenue and it’s no different with marriage-the person looks for another spouse.
Whose fault is it anyway? Nobody knows. But when it comes to divorce you have to pay a price- and this price, unlike dowry, is authorized by the law. It’s called the alimony or maintenance money that the husband must pay his wife throughout her life.(as on 22nd July 2008. Times, they are changing. Someday it may very well be the other way round J). It is very difficult for a man to escape the alimony and I would better not discuss the ways and means by which he can escape. One of the easiest ways is to get away with a permanent settlement.(Again too vast to cover here.). But it is worth a mention that many a times men are looted in court by the same smart woman they had once chosen to marry. In western countries divorces are commonplace; statistically about 50% of marriages in the US end up in a divorce. Relationship phobia has also given rise to a steady rise in the number of single parents, well-to-do individuals willing to adopt a child and raise it alone. Even the unauthorized live-in relationships are no guarantee to a happy marriage-unauthorized because hardly anyone in India bothers to sign the legal documents of a live-in. They just get together and, well, “live-in”.
We all want to get married and stay married-at least most of us do. First and foremost, it is important to understand that the vast majority of couples who stuck together through adversity, stuck together till the end. Secondly, this generation was not heavily dependent on technology.(remember how you keep telling them where to double-click their mouse and where not to. Plus, most of them know very basic cell phone functions). The canvas of their lives had the perfect hues of technology and adversity, which might well be the secret of their marathon partnership. Adversity automatically fosters empathy and triggers cooperation, prosperity ignites the flame of performance and fiery intolerance for non-performers.(Imagine being subjected to a periodic conjugal appraisal- with the fear of being ‘pink-slipped’!!). Sadly, I’m unable to come up with a brilliant idea for ‘adversity-simulation’; you must figure out a way for yourself. But we can always cut down on technology dependence-by exercising self control. Watch less T.V.-read more, memorize the songs you listen on your ipod- sing it and entertain others, remember the catchy jokes- narrate them to an appreciative audience, watch less sports-play more. There are many ways to reduce technology dependence and increase human dependence. (Dependence here is certainly not a bad thing- we are all dependent in one way or another). Technological advancement is a little like driving; it’s feels good to be driving at high speeds but you must sometimes apply the brakes-in order to stay alive. It’s high time we applied the brakes to our technologically advanced dependence, time we fixed the likely harm it has already done to our personal, social and married lives. Do you want the next generation to boast of digitally signed e-marriage certificates and somber e-divorce certificates? (which, by the way will also calculate the estimated alimony you are likely to cough up.) We can still sail through gracefully, we can still make our marriages last. It’s all in our hands. It could either be nightmare or reality-this dowry and that alimony.