India’s top court is urging that the government make male new hires who are married disclose whether they accepted dowry and threaten gaol time if they did:
… a candidate aspiring for a government job, and those already in service, would have to provide information about any dowry taken by them. Under the anti-dowry law, the custom is punishable by a jail term.
This is another example of governments influencing markets through their own purchasing power, e.g. 55 mph speed limits, education testing, minority set-asides, open source software and so on. The public University of California system even forced a rewrite of the venerable SAT test. To the poor kids struggling through the new essay section this spring, y’all can thank Berkeley and UCLA for that.
It’s not clear to me how the anti-dowry plan would be enforceable. Ideally, it would work better than mandatory drug testing, which created a cottage industry in fake urine samples. At its best, it could save future Nisha Sharmas from dowry plight by changing what’s socially acceptable and giving grooms a legitimate excuse to turn aside demands by their families.
I approve of government using market incentives in addition to blunt, sometimes ineffective legislation. Maybe they can issue tax credits for Bollywood Costume Design That’s Not Blindingly Tacky. Or the Padmashree for Novels Without Saris or Mehndi on the Cover.
Now that’s government to be proud of.
Hey, you’re right this will probably just breed another bunch of rule-breakers, but the thing is that at least you try and remove the institutionalisation. The message being put across is that dowry ain’t something to be proud of, and could get you in touble…unfortunately I forsee this being used by evil scheming bureaucrats to oust the 2/3 honest folks that get into the government.
I’m guessing the real idea is that you add a new layer of penalties you can throw at specific people that you really don’t want to be violating the law. Clearly, under this scheme, no one is going to raise their hand and said, tremulously, “Sir,I have to admit something. I accepted a dowry. Please send me to jail.” But by affirming that you have not, when you get caught, you have no given the government two ropes to hang you with–one for the actual crime, and one for lying about it when you were employed by the government/ran for office. It also means that you can’t plead the . .”uh, Mummy and Daddy took care of all that, and I wasn’t really paying attention, and I didn’t realize I had received a Dowry” card. You must actively affirm that you know, so later if you play that card you can at least get politically nailed for affirming without knowing.
Maybe it’s not the most effective thing in the world, but I can’t fault them for trying. If TTG is right, well that’s a damn shame, but that’s really a separate problem that needs to be attacked at its root. My understanding is that the dowry problem is better than it was, say, 60 years ago. If I’m not mistaken it goes hand in hand with parcelling out inherited property so that daughters get some, in their own name, and the total affect has been good for the women of India. Nothing to sneeze at.
i think its unfortunate that “dowry” has been misinterpreted — technically, dowry was given to the boy’s family to take care of the new bride, as she was seen as “leaving” her old family and “joining” her husband’s. it is sad that something given with only good intentions for the girl became a selling point for selecting her as a bride.
in any case, a dowry isn’t a bad thing when given/taken with its true intentions. one would hope educated families would act in this way.
Since dowry is officially illegal in India, and since more than 75 percent of the population engages in it in some form or other, does that mean that 75% of Indians are criminals? Should India be formerly recognized by the United Nations as a “criminal state”? Or, if dowry is really “financial terrorism”, as some claim, can India be recognized officially as a “terrorist state”?
Funnier yet – once someone gets a govt job, they ask for higher amounts in dowry.
What happens to the IAS officers who get 1 crore in dowry?!