I started the dowry series with two personal anecdotes. now here’s another one.
Years before Gurubhai was marrying for money, my grandfather’s sister-in-law was mortgaging her jewllery to finance his apprenticeship in a shop. Without the apprenticeship, my grandfather would have been a tailor. With it, he eventually got his own shop, became an Exide sitributor, and broke into the middle class- which allowed him and his family to escape from Partition alive. If it hadn’t been for my great-aunt’s dowry, I probably wouldn’t be writing this today.
This is the good side of dowry: it transfers wealth from people who have it to people who don’t. This wealth is especially useful to people who need to break from lower class to middle class and won’t get any help from banks to do so. It also gives parents an option to give their daughters an inheritance without having to use a will- which is of no small importance in a country where legal documents can be disputed to such brutal effect.
So here’s a reality check. Dowry has negative connotations. It is associated with forced marriage and a lack of modernity. It has been attacked by everyone from Munshi Premchand to 1980s Doordarshan propaganda filmmakers. It still serves a useful purpose.
But what about the bad stuff I’ve already talked about? The dowry deaths? The unreasonable demands to in-laws? A dowry death is a murder, and needs to be treated as one. The crime is murder, not taking dowry. Similarly, if you have a problem with in-laws being harassed for bigger dowries, treat it as criminal extortion and don’t criminalise dowry. Dowry is value-neutral. As Skimpy points out here, it’s no business of the state – or anybody else- what two families do by way of voluntary wealth transfers. It become’s the state’s business only when physical coercion or intimidation are involved.
Another point. Even assuming dowry bans are successfully enforced, it could end up being a net loss. It would end the high profile, heartstring-tugging, heart-bleeding stories of dowry deaths and destitute girls’ parents, but it would also end up preventing parents from giving their daughters an inheritance without having to die first, and from entrepreneurial sons-in-law getting cheap venture capital. Compare Bastiat’s essay on the Seen and the Unseen.
Dowry isn’t perfect, but it isn’t evil either, any more than high school exams are evil because they lead some students to commit suicide. It could work better, sure, and I’ll discuss how in the next (and final) post of this series. But it’s still a useful tool, and needs to be appreciated as that- a tool, nothing more and nothing less.
1. You seem to assume that dowry happens largely in those cases where the groom is poorer than the bride, entrepreneurial and the money/goods given as dowry stay with the married couple, and not with the in-laws. Clearly, you have no experience of either eastern UP or Bihar, the places where the custom is most widely rampant today. I am not exemplifying my point as there are far too many anecdotes to mention. Have you proceeded under the assumption that by your thought process you’ll be able to reason out every aspect of the issue and multiple anecdotal data points are not required?
2.”It also gives parents an option to give their daughters an inheritance without having to use a will- which is of no small importance in a country where legal documents can be disputed to such brutal effect.”
The choice of terms is very interesting – parents are “given” an “option” apparently, it’s not a compulsion. If the family has enough money to give to the daughter, and wants to be given an “option” to do so, does the family need the “option” of dowry? I am rich, my daughter and lower middle-class entrepreneurial son-in-law need and deserve some of my money and wills can be messy so I give them some money as part of the wedding customs. This is your understanding of dowry?
3. Yes dowry deaths can be covered under murder and forcible demands can be covered under extortion. There’s still ample reason to ban the custom of dowry. In the cases where this “voluntary transfer” of “venture capital” is indeed voluntary, there will be no complaints, and so the state doesn’t come into the picture anyway. Thus, your libertarian concerns of a big bad government that interferes in consensual transactions made by informed adults are unfounded. However, in most cases this transaction is not voluntary. In a system that doesn’t ban dowry, an approach that seeks to embolden parents of the would-be-bride to not succumb to various pressures will be – ” Look if they try and ask for money forcibly, you can always complain. The government will treat them as extortionists. ” In a system where dowry is banned, the approach can be – ” Look, dowry itself is banned. If they try and ask for it, you can complain. There is a special cell that deals with such cases and things are resolved quickly”. Which do you think will be more effective?
4. Just to prove your point of dowry somehow being value-neutral, you had to compare it with board exams? To you, apparently, they are both tools – dowry is a tool of “voluntary” wealth transfer and public examinations are a tool of measuring academic performance. Here’s why the analogy breaks down – voluntary wealth transfer doesn’t require a tool at all. If I want to give money to my daughter, I simply give it. If that is what you understand by dowry, there are no issues anyone could ever have with dowry, but then the entire series would be rather irrelevant. That is NOT, however, what dowry is commonly understood to be. Dowry is indeed a tool, but is a tool of extortion, and worse and most pertinently, socially-accepted extortion. Making it illegal is the first logical step towards reducing its social acceptability.
Have you considered the possiblity that when dowry is a factor in a marriage (forget the quantum),it quickly becomes the only factor..If there is no dowry involved, the cold machinations of arranged marriage will see to it that the bride and groom will be well matched in terms of intellect,physical beauty etc…
Moreover…(as always using extreme cases combined with an entymeme to illustrate arguments):
once the groom’s family has received the dowry,they will see no use in keeping the wife alive..It is more profitable for them to kill her so that they can get another bride and more dowry…
Hence we can see a direct line from dowry transaction to dowry death
Sid,
Yes. So?
That is true. Also, if parents take an insurance policy on their children, it is more profitable for them to kill the children as they can have more children and continue taking out insurance on them. Hence we can see a direct line from insurance to killing kids.
[…] defended dowry as a good and useful financial tool. The main argument against this (pointed out by Ritwik) is that dowry is still indefensible- […]
[…] a blind eye or even support dowry. They have pretexts ranging from what this appalling blog post here has to offer to this one […]
both the aspect have valid point but still dowry is somewhat have a negative connotation but now-a-days its mostly depend on the bride and groom. Groom has to explain their parents that don’t except dowry if she is enough diligent and respectful towards the elder, that the very important thing. every where the mentality prefer though we’ve the courage to raise our daughter more like our sons we’ve rarely had the courage to raise our sons like our daughters. dowry should be banned but we will not get the results if we don’t start it with ourselves. I started in my family and I am getting the support also.
The shittiest article I have ever read. You must be a child who has just gone as far as his patio.
Thank you aadisht. The article was good. Its nice to see that there is still someone who has no fear in speaking his mind.
Duality exists everywhere. People just feel comfortable with things being black or white.
While dowry deaths and extortion are social evils, they cannot be linked entirely to a single issue of dowry.
Someone said that since dowry deaths occur due to dowry, we should stay away from dowry. But since dowry happens because of marriage why not stay away from marriage.
Marriage is a choice and so is dowry.
If people think that this is bullshit,no problem. I am entitled to my opinion and you can have yours.