The Hindu : Academy turns `matrimonial market'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Feb 01, 2004

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National

Academy turns `matrimonial market'

By Our Staff Correspondent

NEW DELHI, JAN. 31. The prestigious Lal Bahadur Shastri Academy of Administration at Mussorrie has virtually become a "marriage market," with the parents of the "ready-to-be-brides" offering any "price" to woo young eligible bachelors. And the process of luring officers starts the day the results of the Civil Services (Mains) are declared!

Worse, the parents use all their sources and resources to get hold of prospective grooms. Many call up Ministers heading the Personnel Ministry to get addresses and sometimes even use them to finalise alliances.

The Union Human Resource Development Minister, Murli Manohar Joshi, related his experiences while inaugurating the week-long celebrations of the foundation day of the National Commission for Women (NCW) here today. "Such requests used to come to me for my students when I was a teacher. But an individual approached me recently for his daughter's alliance with a bright young boy. The officer's family was willing, but also wanted Rs. 50 lakh as dowry."

Earlier, the former Union Minister, Margaret Alva, spoke of her interactions with the people who would approach her for addresses of budding officers, until the practice was stopped by the Ministry.

"However, this is not the case with women officers," she said. An Indian Police Service officer who married her colleague is often told by her in-laws that if their son had married a girl in his community, they would have got a huge dowry. "What have you brought? Only a uniform which is of no use to us,'' she is often reminded.

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