CHANGING SCENARIO OF INDIAN MARRIAGE

• (Relevant for Sociology Syllabus: Paper 2- Systems of Kinship in India)
• (Relevant for GS Syllabus: Paper1- Effects of globalization on Indian society)

• Marriage in the Hindu society had been and is still a very complex affair indeed. There used to be a time when the priest and his assistant took the role of matchmakers. Slowly as time passed, parents of girls and boys got wiser and decided to take this role away from the priest and handle it themselves.
• The job of the priest was cut short to the extent of rituals only. The onus of looking for a suitable match was on the shoulders of the bride’s father, who happened to be the beneficiary of the whole process in the end.
• Eventually, things changed still further and everyone in the near and dear ones started having a say in the process. The boy or the girl had hardly any voice or choice to make. In fact, it was considered taboo to speak in matters of one’s marriage in front of elders.
• In case someone does open his or her mouth, it becomes pure heresy. When discussions used to take place about their marriage, boys would sit mum and girls, of course, would not even know anything about it.
• This used to happen because the marriages were solemnized at an early age when adolescent boys and girls had hardly any idea of worldly affairs. Child marriage was a norm and if someone grew older, it would have become difficult to find a match, and he or she would face the danger of remaining unmarried for life.
• Since elders had a big say, money took preponderance over everything else. Property of the girl’s father, and gifts to be given to the extended family, mattered a lot. The size of the marriage procession and the presence of elephants and horses became a matter of serious discussion, being related to the prestige of both sides.
• Thus everything that hardly mattered to the young couple, was so important. In the end, the girl’s family has to cough out a formidable amount, just to be wasted away on unnecessary expenses, which have no relevance for the actual marriage, per se.
• A huge firework is at best amusing, why should one want a loud bang. Maybe it is reminiscent of the war between two factions. In fact, the old custom of going to the bride’s house and bring the bride by force, after defeating her father in the war, must have been the reason. The lofty ideal of simple marriage has evaporated into thin air.
• Indian society has been facing a crisis of family relations in recent times. The problems did exist earlier too. However, the changes in the rules and laws related to family affairs, have now precipitated problems and exposed the dormant fissures.
• Slowly the situation has gone out of control and the girl’s father many times has to worry about payments of loans after his daughter’s marriage. People try to give those gifts in their daughter’s marriage, which they might have never seen in their life. Although the rules were framed to curb the menace, people soon learned to circumvent the same.
• When the girl’s father visits the would-be groom’s family for discussions, he is often treated with contempt. According to Hindu orthodox customs, he was not supposed to take even water from the groom’s house. The talks would sometimes go on to the extent of humiliation and proposals turned down for money.
• Sometimes the bride’s father would play smart and approach the police to file an FIR about the rejection of the proposal due to the demand for money. Such episodes have cast a very bad impression on the psyche of the girls. A few rejections of the proposals tend to make girls become very negative and even parents subsequently hesitate even to talk of any fresh proposal.
• Then arrives the scene of love marriage. Boys and girls who meet in institutions or at the job, are mature persons and start taking their own decisions about the future life. In this context, another twist has been introduced now. In some societies, looking for one’s bride is the norm rather than the exception.
• Accordingly, boys from such families would outsmart those who wait for the girl’s family to propose. The skewed sex ratio has added more woes, leading to friction. The modern link between two parties is the internet, with all the risks of false data and impersonation. No doubt this is taking the youth to a very different line of thinking.
• The events are unpalatable to the older generations, and also collectively to the society at large. Only very liberal thinking on part of parents is likely to solve the issue, as the clock cannot be back.

 

HOW WE CAN UPLIFT AND UPGRADE THE EDUCATION SYSTEM FOR RURAL STUDENTS?

• (Relevant for Sociology Syllabus: Paper 1- Social Change in Modern Society)
• (Relevant for GS Syllabus: Paper 1- Social empowerment)
• The majority of India lives in rural areas and the way progress and development happened in Rural India indicates the direction in which our country is moving towards and education is an essential element that indicates the progress of a country in long run, because what we do today to uplift and upgrade the education system for rural students it will demonstrate results in the future.
• At the outset, it is important for us to understand the gap in rural and urban education systems, on one side the urban education systems are equipped with modern infrastructure, innovative and international exposure-based learning methods and accessibility of education to all, when we look at look at rural education system it lacks accessibility for all, inclusion and is far behind in the other aspects such as infra, innovation, and global exposure.
• The positive part is the lack of resources available makes high equality education as a very important desire and those who are able to somehow manage to access it due to their hard work or luck, leverage it to the fullest, to back this point there are various CEOs, senior government officials, top-class scientists who have emerged from rural India and they have contributed significantly to the growth of our country.
• In my opinion, the following initiatives are needed to uplift and upgrade the education system for rural students:
  • MAKE IT AVAILABLE AND ACCESSIBLE FOR ALL: In some parts of our country education is not available to all due to various constraints such as geographical, social believe and taboos or from the point of infrastructure-related constraints, therefore the first step is to make education available and accessible to all.
  • THINK BEYOND CLASSROOM EDUCATION: In rural areas education is also limited to the classroom learning and students get limited access to other forms of experiential learning methods due to this impacts the learning and limits the students exposure in discovering their full potential.
  • EQUIP WITH TECHNOLOGY: In the current context of education in the COVID 19 era, school and students both were able to continue some form of education using basic technology such as mobile and internet, but in rural areas, students and the school could manage continuity of education in a very limited way, and the need for access to technology at least at a basic level was felt very strongly.
  • RESULT-ORIENTED LEARNING ENVIRONMENT: In the rural context of education results are limited to academic results, it is important to focus on academic results but there are other results also that could be important such as extracurricular, personality, and behavior development, in order to achieve overall development results schools in rural areas should be equipped with the tools to create a learning environment that will allow teachers to get the results in all the areas. A healthy and happy environment can’t be created by teachers alone need support and tools to build an environment.
  • INVOLVEMENT OF PARENTS: In urban areas, there is a lot of focus and there are various forums created by schools to involve parents in the education process, however, in the rural education system parents are involved either at the time of admissions or at the time of final results. Either parent does not want to interfere or they are not interested, the chances of not being interested are less since it is about the future of their own child. Parents are not aware and therefore partially involved in the overall process of the education of their child, an initiative towards parent’s education, highlighting their role and the forums available for them to participate will be really helpful and it will increase the involvement of parents and it will be a critical input in uplifting the education system.