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From: bhatnaga@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU (Bhatnaga)
Newsgroups: net.nlang.india
Subject: Re: dowry
Message-ID: <4098@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU>
Date: Sat, 19-Oct-85 13:42:21 EDT
Article-I.D.: topaz.4098
Posted: Sat Oct 19 13:42:21 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 21-Oct-85 07:06:47 EDT
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Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
Lines: 49


> It is plain economics that works here, not fashion.

Good that some one brought the economical aspect in here. Consider our 
society, consider the commodities that are available in the market and 
consider how difficult it is to acquire them. Now consider the short cuts
that people devise to acquire them when they can't acquire them otherwise.
Consider the prevelent bribery in our government machinery and consider 
the tax theft and black marketeering present in our business. 
Now consider dowry in marriages.It may look to be an
over simplification of a problem which is existing for 
hundreds of years; it nevertheless is a major deterministic factor.
	
	I consider dowry to be a continuation of the same evil socioeconomic
spectrum. We justify those who bend the government rules as 'tactful', we 
condone  business crimes as 'smartness' and most of us have found a similar
convenient justification of dowry. In most of the marriages and families
in northern India (at the least) giving and taking of dowry has become a 
matter of prestige. The more the merrier. And with thousand and one ways 
available to make and hide black money it has become very easy to give and 
take dowry.

	I know some marriages where the brides did nothing to discourage
getting expensive gifts from their families (in fact they encouraged). 
They simply knew that this was an easy way to quickly achieve a standard 
of living which will otherwise come in atleast a couple of years.

	No criticism is good without a suggested solution but, unfortunately,
no solution is easy! (How) Can we stop bribery, (How) Can we stop business
malpractices, (How) can we stop dowry?

 Can we go for western type nuclear families where financial responsibilities 
for a newly wed couple are less and financial independence is more. Yes, we can
but it will introduce many other equally bad social problems (I dont want 
to cite any examples;  it might lead to new issues and new flames).

 Can we go for very stringent punishments for dowry givers and takers?
But who would you like to punish- the groom, the bride, the parents?

 Can we wait till our national wealth increases, population explosion stops
and dowry becomes undesirable and unwanted? Yes we can but it will take 
thirty or three hundred years? It might even be a Utopia.

 One thing that we can do (and we are doing)is that if we think that dowry 
(or bribery or blackmarketeering) is bad we can tell a friend that it is 
so. It might help.

Neeraj Bhatnagar
bhatnagar@red.rutgers.edu