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IT revolution and declining dowry practice
Chandra Kommera
With the advent of IT revolution in India, it seems the dowry practice is declining gradually even though that decline is not so discernible. Perceivably these factors are contributing to that trend:
1) A considerable number of young men are getting highly-paid jobs. Much of their salary is going into savings, making them rupee millionaires in a short time. They are reluctant to ask/accept dowry as they do not need to care about that money. Even when the parents are insisting, the youth are refusing.
2) On a par with men, young women are also getting highly-paid jobs. This is making them assert themselves and reject any marriage proposals from men who ask for dowry.
3) For several hundred years inter-caste marriages were a kind of taboo in Indian society. Even if some progressive minded families wanted to go in for inter-caste marriages, they were apprehensive to do it in practice for the reason that caste traditions did not match. However with the spread of IT jobs, a new social class has emerged whose way of life is almost homogeneous across the castes. This gave the opportunity for the youth to look beyond their own caste resulting in more choices. Consequently dowry is becoming a least important criterion for marriages.
4) Increasing financial independence at a young age is prompting the youth to opt for love marriages rather than arranged ones which is leading to non-dowry marriages.
5) All this scenario in IT jobs is spilling over to other highly-paid career areas discouraging the youth and their parents from encouraging dowry marriages. IAS/IPS recruits trying to demand high dowries based on the earlier trend seem to be not getting marriage alliances at all, as the girls’ parents are preferring a less-dowry/non-dowry software engineer to an IAS/IPS bridegroom.
Counter-productive
Dowry is a practice which cannot be driven out by the laws made by the government as in most cases dowry is given/taken with mutual consent.
Even if the government tries to crack down on it with a heavy hand, it could be counter-productive just like Sanjay Gandhi’s efforts to impose family planning surgeries during the Emergency period.
Probably during our lifetime itself we may see the dowry practice becoming as defunct as the Sati practice. Just as a rare sporadic occurrence of Sati is reported in newspapers, the day may come when a dowry marriage is reported like this:
“In xyz city, a dowry marriage occurred. Local social organisations have angrily protested against it. Police are trying to arrest the absconding bridegroom and his parents. Women’s organisations are demanding that all the attendees of the marriage be punished.”
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