You can debate it till the cows come home and go back, of course, but on the Open Page of The Hindu, Chandra Kommera claims that the advent of the “IT revolution” has led to a gradual if not immediately discernible decline in the dowry menace.
***
Reason 1: A considerable number of young men are getting highly-paid jobs. They are become rupee millionaires pretty quickly and are reluctant to ask/accept dowry even if their parents insist.
Reason 2: The IT boom is also helping young women to get highly-paid jobs, who are not reluctant to assert themselves and reject marriage proposals from men who ask for dowry.
Reason 3: The spread of IT jobs has spawned a new social class whose way of life is almost homogeneous across castes. This enlarges the playing field for the youth to look beyond their own caste.
Reason 4: The increasing financial independence of boys and girls at a young age is prompting to go in for “love” marriages rather than arranged ones with all their attendant baggage.
Reason 5: With IT boys and girls setting the trend, there is no longer the same kind of demand for IAS and IPS recruits as the parents of girls prefer less-dowry/non-dowry SWE to an IAS/IPS groom.
***
True or false? Is the IT revolution resulting in this unforeseen social revolution? Or have you heard the horror stories among IT pros too? Are IAS and IPS types really going out of demand? Or are we just clutching on to whatever trend straws we can spot? And, IT or not, will the dowry menace really end in this yug if not the next?
churumuri 
You should probably post this in some gulti website / discussion forums! Not here!
LikeLike
Gultis unite, you have nothing to lose but your spices
LikeLike
Looking at the inclination of Churmuri to post all and sundry from that worthless paper , guess the editor of this blog is getting some feelers from the commie paper to join them
LikeLike
Finally a positive IT story on Churumuri! What’s up, guys? Has the fire in the belly been stubbed out?
On a serious note, are we as a society going to view everything through the prism of IT? We hear of sperm counts among Indian mean falling only when it happens to IT men. Somewhere there was a story recently of rising divorces among IT couples. We take note of rising suicides only when frustrated IT professionals hang themselves. And we look at the insecurity on the streets only when IT women are kidnapped or killed or both.
Let’s say there are a million IT pros in the country. If they marry amongst themselves as the article seems to suggest, then their impact is minimal. Even if all the IT men marry non-IT girls, the impact cannot exceed two million directly. How does the author make the leap and conclude that there is a huge societal impact?
LikeLike
for me the question is what would these millions do without the IT industry? Without denying any of the other aspects of life, what would it do to industry and enterprise? which. unless somebody is sold on certain ideas, would agree are as critical to countries health as is welfare state.
i cannot imagine myself getting sucked into tableeghi or those baptist groups but somebody like me is more likely to be sucked into either the useless advani or the karat camps.
Whether we like it or not coincident with “IT/liberalization” “revolution” is also the focus on governance. (I am just saying coincident.) I know the movies were filled with “evil” industrialist, jai jai union, and mushier than a kiTTi village type of stories, but I wonder what the news paper of yore were filled with? The books are still doing the “wily” brahmin,”evil” landlord routine but that is because that “market” is still lucrative. Churumuri’s darling Guha i hear is doing just fine, mouthing innanities of the kind that bollywood represents syncretism (when was the last time you saw a respectable southie in a bollywood movie, forget northeasterner), what with all the shelf space he has been occupying in the book stores in the west.
there is this rather amusing review of Devanooru Mahadeva’s latest book in the Hindu. It starts off with dissing Bhyrappa on a tangent and praising M’s book on it’s path breaking originality, and integrity & clarity, goes through some details – same old “wily” brahmin,”evil” landlord routine and then finally concludes by saying that it is a old plot afterall, and that there have been better books on the theme by other writers, even in kannada, and that either conceptually or on literary merits, this book does not stand out. i just held my tummy and ye.bi.na all the while slapping the floor like a school girl.
c’mon churumuri is reduced to peddling surangaNi aNaku. c’mon cheena attacked us, tibbet refugees eat up prime land stone’s throw away from mysore, and then there is gwadar and then there is shaheen(a boost for pakistani paint industry and painters guild not to mention the nooke tests on their behalf) and our elites find amrika troublesome, worst still, churumuri plays conduit conduit for such propaganda? gimme a break.
LikeLike
but somebody like me is more likely to be sucked into either the useless advani or the karat camps.
naah! not even those, boring crap, prolly be roaming the ghatta, with other comrades.
LikeLike
I had done some field research sometime back on a similar topic. Reason #1 might be true, but Reason #2 to #4 are inline with my result. The maximum impact is on the ladies who come from smaller towns and work in BPOs.
Me thinks the Hindu is grabbing maximum real-estate in Churumuri.
TS: Guha’s book is quite nice (although with a bit of Nehruvian bent)!
LikeLike
Sad to see this kind of rubbish on churumuri..really disappointing..
LikeLike
that was a myopic, skewed article I had read in The Hindu. Wonder how they managed to get it published.
Despite the skewed observations, some aspects were alright. It’s true that the economic edge that women have got in the IT and BPO sectors, specially from lower-middle class families, has brought some amount of assertiveness among women. Some sense of confidence in people previously oppressed…
But I don’t think the perfception towrds women in the institution of marriage has changed much. Instead of dowry, families now ask for “professionally qualified women” who are well-placed in lucrative jobs. The economic perspective has reinforced capitalist, patriatchal dimensions in the society. I know about my women friends whose parents force them to go for a high-paid job rather than pursue a life of their own.
Caste inequalities still exist (refer churumuri’s latest posts) and even if they are diminishing (very very marginal and only among upper or middle class), a more dangerous dimension of the class conflict is what we are seeing now. Their is greater economic disparity today…
And what have love marriages got to do with financial independence, except for the couple can start their lives on a financially secure note? And if this is the reason, then it’s worse to imagine that two individuals come together because of the economic comfort they would find in spending lives with each other. And things were’s any different before. Marriages were also arranged earlier only if the groom was “well-settled”.
Big deal if a millionaire rejects dowry. He won’t stand to lose much. And am sure the IT fellows are in no way setting a trend here.
This generation is more (or as) materialistic than any other…
(What will you say for this? My relatives looked down upon me when I was working as an environmental journalist in a not-so mainstream magazine — they had problems with my singledom. The moment I moved to a corporate job some years ago due to financial reasons, I was seen as a sacrificing celibate who is being a good daughter. Again when I decided to return to journalism, a newspaper (and not a glamorous tv job), no one is keen on me staying in their house, because I’m single and that there’s definitely wrong with me not to find a US-settled IT professional guy.
Nothing unusual…it happens to most of the women, even who chose to lead their lives on their own terms…)
LikeLike
I feel the individual mind set requires change to eradicate the dowry evil. Its quite a serious concern and definitely we need to get rid of this. Daily news contains maximum number of dowry deaths and harrasment as usual. May be to some extent IT boom might have helped but the evil still persists strongly among all sects of people.. Even yesterdays news highlighted about an NRI doctor demanding for dowry. So disgusting.
But some hopeful moves like http://www.idontwantdowry.com is sure to create awareness among the individuals. The site has seen more than 6000 individuals registering themselves against the wild practice. Lets all welcome such moves and create a dowry free society
LikeLike
Statistically designed sample surveys (not SMS type) will be required which will take into account factors such as income level, education, and elicit information on caste practices regarding dowry, form in which dowry is demanded – cash and kind, and so on. No really meaningful conclusions can be drawn without study of such systematic data through random sampling properly stratified. Usually people on both sides of marriage enter into negotiation only after ascertaining the respective economic levels being comparable for further consideration of a ‘proposal’. Dowry deaths seem to occur in lower middle level downwards (Again upper, middle, lower, etc. economic levels need to be precisely defined.) In the absence of these, press publication of “stories” about dowry practices and influencing factors, and trends and patterns, will be spicy to read but of no real worth, while they may generate unjustified heat among some readers. Which should be avoided by responsible media. But good writers may be assigned the job of writing the dowry articles, for their lucidity without sacrificing truth and precision. Thus proper sample studies should precede such wirte-up work, which must be based on the non-technical submission of findings by a statistician.
LikeLike
Pingback: How IT has changed the marrriage market « churumuri
An interesting but preposterous article. Unfortunately our families have the menace of dowry so deeply cultivated amongst the culture that, viewing from the marginal sphere of IT etc has no actual meaning to it.
As ‘Sift’ has written above the spectrum of dowry has in fact broadened itself by not limiting itself just to monetary demands upfront at the pre-nuptial agreement but by going further with continous demands even after a considerable time after marriage.
I really feel saddened for the less fortunate women and their families in this country who are made to go through this horror of denial of equality in terms of respect, right to live life with as much dignity as men do.
Thanks ‘Vivek’ for actively propagating the website on blogs like this.
It’s the dialogue at every level including educational and societal level which is going to help the cause.
LikeLike