Slump hits the bride outsourcing industry
April 11, 2009
You may have read Wall Street Journal article Ineligible Bachelors: Indian Men Living in U.S. Strike Out. The piece captures the plight of non-resident Indians, who are unable to outsource suitable brides from home in the down market. Apparently, there are no takers for these men in the home country.
When things were better, these same men were inundated with offers (Remember Vikram Seth’s Suitable Boy?) and the practice of mail ordering (“male ordering” pun intended) brides from Eastern countries, especially India, Philippines, Russia and China was so rampant that marriage often became a ruse in the hands of unscrupulous grooms who would abandon their brides later and make good with their dowry.
According to the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs, an estimated 30,000-35,000 brides are abandoned every year, usually by husbands living abroad. Worried Indian parents have now resorted to hiring private detectives to run a background check on a prospective groom and double-checking his credentials, given the widespread concern about a groom’s dwindling prospects in the recession-hit US economy.
The parents’ concern is valid given shocking tales of maltreatment that have provided grist to filmmakers like Deepa Mehta, who has captured the vulnerability of one such bride in her critically acclaimed ‘Heaven on Earth or ‘Videsh’ (as it was screened in India). Tenuous relationships apart, the financial stakes in an Indian wedding are also high, as much as Rs 5 to 20 lakhs for an upper middle-class Indian couple, which is several times the country’s per capita GDP!
Before recession hit the matrimonial industry, the wedding market in India was estimated to be around Rs. 800 billion and was expected to grow by 25% per annum. Even now, the practice of outsourcing life partners to second world countries persists in the West under different guises, such as online dating and blind dates set up by family. However, as with any other kind of outsourcing, this too can flourish only if partners are selected with care and a lot of forethought!
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3 Responses to “Slump hits the bride outsourcing industry”
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Families should look the bride groom’s character first and then they should look other things like job, salary, etc. In fact if the boy comes from good family then has good track records then the girl’s parents should go with that boy even if he is out of job in this bad economy.
It is a cycle, once the market comes up then the market for people working in US, UK, etc will go up. It is a good question “Why no family is seeing the education, character, family etc? ” Not sure I know the answer.
An Indian friend of mine recently returned to India from the US because he couldn’t find a mate here and his parents located someone for him there.