Did your mother force you to get married? Did you go on a blind date this year? I believe that many elderly young people have felt the marriage care from their parents and elders during the New Year!
Compared with the fiery marriage urging of the elders, most young people have a very Buddha-like mentality towards marriage.
In 2020, the number of marriage registrations nationwide declined for seven consecutive years, according to data released by China's Ministry of Civil Affairs.
Why are today's young people reluctant to get married?
In fact, young people living in the 21st century face far greater pressures than their elders think. The workplace environment of mortgages, car loans, school district housing, and inner volumes has made many young people face the embarrassment of early baldness.
At present, the sky-high dowry in all major regions of the country has also set up a problem for couples who want to get married.
You may not be able to imagine that in some remote and backward rural areas, the dowry has reached more than 100,000. In first-tier developed cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, etc., there have even been more than one million dowries.
A bride price photo of a wedding in Zhejiang, China
Such a figure makes many young men with ordinary incomes daunted, even if they have the intention to get married, they cannot afford such a high bride price.
Just when the Chinese boys were worried about the sky-high dowry, the Indian girls cried red eyes for the sky-high dowry.
In most parts of India, it does not cost much for a man to marry a wife, while a woman needs a large dowry to marry.
According to a World Bank survey, 95 per cent of the 40,000 marriages that took place in 17 Indian states (including 96 per cent of the Indian population) between 1960 and 2008 paid dowries. From 1950 to 1999, the total value of India's dowry was about $25 trillion. Even in poor rural areas, the woman's dowry is more than 5 times higher than the man's dowry.
In addition, the amount of the dowry is also linked to the husband's work income, and the better the husband, the more the dowry paid by the wife's mother's family.
According to 2012 data:
Men engaged in civil servants can receive a dowry of about 10 million to 50 million rupees (equivalent to about 1 million to 5 million yuan);
Men who work as doctors and engineers can receive a dowry of about 50 to 1 million yuan;
Men in other better positions, such as teachers, can also receive a dowry of at least 50,000 yuan.
According to the latest data, India's per capita annual income is only 1927 US dollars (equivalent to about 12,000 yuan). That is to say, a girl who wants to make up her dowry, has to work independently, and does not eat or drink for more than four years, so that she can save the minimum amount.
Not only that, but between 1960 and 2005, more than 90 percent of marriages were arranged by parents. That is to say, in India, the opening of a marriage is not the union of two new people, but the bargaining business of two families.
Marrying a daughter and sending a dowry has long been a customary marriage custom in Indian society. This folklore is mainly due to the fact that in ancient India (c. 1500 BC - 500 BC), daughters who married out did not have the right to inherit family property. After realizing the irrationality of the regulations, Indians with clear brain circuits did not abolish the regulations to promote the status of women. Instead, by giving a dowry in the marriage, a part of the mother's family property was transferred to the daughter's name.
However, this original intention of protecting women's rights and interests has completely changed its flavor under the evolution of the times and the test of human nature.
Now, India's dowry is no longer the economic security that the mother voluntarily gives to the new person, but the soft rice of the husband's family in disguise. The number of dowries determines the success of marriage, which has long been a common unspoken rule in Indian marriage.
In a report in the British newspaper The Guardian, an Indian woman committed suicide in despair because she did not have enough dowry. In another city, another woman was almost rejected by her in-laws because her in-laws were dissatisfied with the number of dowries.
The pressure of the dowry has plunged indian women, who are already in a humble position, into an even more desperate predicament.
Poor-income parents were in debt to prepare their daughters' dowries; poor young girls were promised to goons and old men who did not want dowries; and countless baby girls were considered burdens to be abandoned as soon as they were born.
And even if the marriage is successful, the dowry is still an excellent means for the husband to blackmail his wife.
If the wife is unwilling to give in, what awaits her may be abuse, beating or even death. In 2020, a wife was burned alive simply by refusing her husband's request for more of her family's property.
An Indian woman who was abused by her husband for a dowry dispute
As early as 2019, there were 7,100 such "dowry deaths", but only more than 1,000 were criminalized. Under the "divine manipulation" of the Indian penal department, most of the husbands who harmed their wives have not yet borne any responsibility.
The negative effects of dowry have made many families in India reluctant to have children and raise girls, which has seriously affected the proportion of the country's population. According to the 2016 World Census, India's male-to-female ratio is 1,000:944, and there are tens of millions more men than women.
But even so, most Indian men are still reluctant to lower their weight. They would rather disgust themselves and others with brotherly wives (meaning several brothers and a wife forming a family) than abolish this lucrative dowry system.
A rural Indian family with brothers and wives
In fact, the Chinese dowry is good, the Indian dowry. The original intention is to give the marriage of the newlyweds an extra layer of protection. Their existence should not be used as a standard for materializing marriages, let alone determine the longevity and happiness of a marriage!