Low divorce rates - Not as nice as they look...

Prone as we are to give in to our incessant desire to compare, it is difficult to accept the enormous difference in living standards when we come abroad.
It doesn't seem fair that some people in some parts of the world can lead vastly better lives than others elsewhere.
It doesn't seem fair that old people, like my grandparents, are not cared for by the government like those of my european friend's. Or that every guy here has been to some part of the world other than their own while a large number of my own relatives, (well-off in their own communities by any standard) will not in their lifetimes go further north than Delhi or south than Chennai. Or that you are going to be fed by the government if you have no food to eat and no job you can do.

But then our belief that the law of averages holds, and the lord Yama/Indra will take care of it, suggests that we must have something that people here don't. How else can it be that these people have more than what we do ?

And the first thing that comes to mind, due to more a lack of imagination, than keen observation is that we have better family lives.
No Divorces, No broken families, No pre-marital sex, No illegitimate children et al.

Ideally, if we had everything else as in this part of the world and still had the above, things couldn't be better.
But little do those who raise such an argument understand that these are not independent to our current social and economic situation. India's low divorce rate is explained as much by the degree of independence that women have as much it is a culture that we are so proud of.

More Divorces are better, India's divorce rate is a little too low. I wouldn't want it to be so high as the US or the UK. But a little higher than now is definitely a lot better.

I'm not asking more women to divorce their husbands, rather I claim that less divorces are due to the highly dependent condition of women on me than what is believed.
My intention is to rebuff those who take lower divorces and better family lives as defence in their understanding of the western world.
If more women taking up jobs and being financially dependent mean more divorces so be it.

We could have marginally worser family lives and more divorces to feed more of our people, make our women more independent, and send more children to schools.
A divorce will be easier to digest than the idea of millions of women stuck in their homes performing duties far lesser than their potential suggests.

No Reality check for me please!

They say economic reform's only just taking off, there is not a word of either social or political reform. But who cares?
All I want to hear or talk about is of family and friends taking up well paid, very well paid ones indeed, in multinational firms or heading to universities abroad. I only want to read the Economic Times, - its front page often tells me stuff like why I should get married to a manager if I am a techie and other interesting stuff, and importantly it doesn't spoil my mood by reporting a farmer suicide every other day.

And please don't tell me about any of the following, I've had too much of preaching on it already,

1. Politicians or politics,
I am strictly non-political, I've never liked politics since a child, I am completely obsessed with work. Who cares if our Chief Minister is giving away free power and our farmers are sucking their farms bone dry or if contracts for the biggest construction projects are given for plans designed in less than a month or if a new community is going to get a new share of the remaining unreserved pie.
2. Caste
Caste, don't even utter that word please. I am strictly against discrimination on the basis of caste, and it should be eliminated, I don't know how but I am going to marry the girl my parents search for me, compatibility is very important for marriage of course.
3. Poor People who are dying
It is quite sad, but there are always poor people and everybody has to die of course. These days it has become more common from what they say, poor chaps, I don't know why so many of them have to die and worse kill themselves. But at some point, it gets sick - you know, reading about death every day, that's why I moved to the TOI or ET, they have more interesting stuff there.

I think it is important to be cool, there is no point getting angry, we must try to find a way around things, after all, status quo seems alright.
We don't have to get angry about corrupt government servants, poor public health service, contaminated water or criminalized politics, after all we are all lucky enough to be smart, we'll soon be rich and we don't have to worry about any of these later.

We are the nation's intellectual elite, we don't have to bother about problems that plague our people.
Of course not. We have enough of our own problems to sort out.