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 On
India's vast array of matchmaking web sites, horoscopes are
being replaced
by income
statements.
Questions
about family
history are
being dwarfed
by
questions about
potential layoffs.
And
the U.S.-based,
NRI
(Non Resident
India)
groom —
oncethe most
coveted prize
at the top
of the Indian
matrimonial
hierarchy
and seen by
many
families in
India as their daughter's ticket to a better life — has
become the latest
casualty of
the world's economic downturn.
Ten years ago,
Indian men born or working abroad could almost be assured
of
meeting a dozen
or so possible brides on wife-hunting trips to India. "Typically,
NRI
women want
to marry NRI men, and NRI men want to marry native Indian
women,"
says Sandeep
Amar, business head for SimplyMarry.com. (The discrepancy
comes from
the perception that a woman living in India will have remained
true to
the culture
under less western influence.) These days, though, male suitors
would
be lucky to
meet even one. Many women looking for a husband on India's
matrimonial
web sites, such as 25-year-old senior business consultant
Vipra
Gupta, are
no longer interested. Since the global recession hit, Mumbai-based
Gupta worries
that if she were to marry an NRI, her future could become
very
uncertain.
"What if in one or two months he loses his job and we
have to leave
America?"
she asks. "It's a risky situation and I wouldn't want
to get into it."
Gupta's
sentiment reflects a new confidence among India's youth who
no longer
view a trip
to the West as the holy grail of financial and personal success.
"In the
early nineties,
a guy who earned $100 in India would go abroad and make ten
to
twenty times
that amount of money," says Murugavel Janakiraman, founder
and
CEO of Bharatmatrimony.com,
a matrimonial website with a subscriber base of 15
million. "The
demand for [ NRI men] was at its peak during that time."
In
the past year, the economic downturn and the rise of India
as a global player has
changed all
that. On SimplyMarry.com, another popular online matchmaker
service,
users' search
for NRI men has gone down by 15%, reports Amar. NRI men, for
their
part, appear
to have gotten the hint. There were also 20% fewer postings
by men
living abroad.
"Arranged
marriage is a concept in which the bride's parents look for
well-settled
grooms,"
says Amar. "Stable and high-paying jobs and a well-settled
monetary
situation is
the fundamental criteria." With so much news of job losses
coming out
of the US,
he says parents of Indian girls are much more reluctant to
send them
abroad without
a security net. Even the matchmaking period has increased,
says
Amar. "Previously,
people used to close a match in around six to eight months.
Now this matchmaking
period has become over a year because men and women in
India have
become more discerning as consumers and they want more
compatibility."
Prabhakar Janakiraman,
for one, is feeling the effects. An IT professional who works
on projects
in both the US and Canada, 32-year-old Janakiraman says women
and
their parents
are increasingly apprehensive about men from abroad. "If
I were settled
in India right
now, I would have been easily married," he says. "But
parents are
thinking twice
now about whether a person is reliable or not." Janakiraman
briefly
considered
moving back to India to look for a good match, but he's been
lucky so
far, at least
in the professional department. He received his green card
recently and
is considering
a move to New York.
With India's
rise on the global stage, women too, are prospering. This
makes them
reluctant to
quit high-paying jobs in their home cities in India and move
to the West,
where they
are unlikely to get working visas or jobs, at least for the
first few years.
"I'm a
very career- oriented girl, so I can't just leave and sit
at home for a year" says
Gupta. "I
want to work and I want to focus on my career. These things
matter."
Amar likens
arranging marriages to shopping for food. "It's like
a department store,"
he says. "You
can pick up whatever brand you like." For the Indian
bride, it seems,
the preferred
choice is now closer to home.
Source: TIME Magazine
– Aug. 2009
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