Are we prepared?

Not so long ago in India, love marriages were unheard of. Both my maternal and paternal grandparents were married for more than 60 years, and had never seen each other before the union. My parents have been married for 32 years now.  They only met once before they took the plunge. Now times have changed drastically. More than 30% of marriages in India are love marriages. Pre-marital sex is very common. Inter-caste marriages are on the rise. Even in contemporary arranged marriages, people prefer meeting each other multiple times over coffee and meal rendezvous, to get to know each other better. We are gradually starting to emulate the West when it comes to love, sex and marriage.

Hoardings and billboards are galore with scantily dressed women selling various life style products. Indian cinema is blatantly embracing sex, with intimate/love making scenes having become bolder like never before.

This love/sex /marriage revolution has already brought about significant cultural changes in India’s urban metropolitan cities, and is slowly spreading to small towns and cities too! But a compelling question still looms large! Are we ready for this revolution just as yet?

India is witnessing huge despair-driven exodus in the countryside. About 350 million Indians now live in cities, and an additional 250 million are expected to move to urban areas in the next two decades. Most of these migrants are economic migrants who come from small, impoverished villages and towns in search of better work opportunities. However they do not get the kind of work and education they expect and continue to languish in poverty. This frustrated lot, with little or no money in their pockets, slog to make ends meet. Some fall prey to alcoholism and drug abuse. With little motivation and broken community ties, they reel under an extreme sense of anonymity with no social expectations to fear.  When exposed to the unfamiliar modern vibe of cities, they feel out of place and confused. It is these very people who then end up becoming perpetrators of heinous women related crimes such as rapes, acid attacks etc. Similar is the case of the nouveau riche. Delhi and its surrounding states are experiencing rapid infrastructure growth. A lot of farmers/rural landowners living on the city’s periphery have sold off their lands and become rich over-night. They hail from the lower social and economic strata of the society, and lack the worldly wisdom and fundamental values to handle their newly acquired wealth. Besides sex-education is literally absent in the country, with abortions surging on an unprecedented scale.

Thus, even though India’s educated burgeoning middle-class is aping the West and embracing modernity with open hearts, there is still a huge section of our society, which is culturally retrograde and thus, is torn between traditionalism and western views.

Male libido is running strong and men still have restricted access to women. As Indian novelist and journalist 'Khushwant Singh' rightly says- 'sexual repression is the result of 9/10^th’s of India’s crime and violence problem'.

India is under-going a massive cultural transition, but are we really ready for it? Does this revolution come at a cost?

Here’s hoping that we soon have the right roads to drive this Ferrari on!!!

[This blog is inspired by the views expressed by Indian novelist Ira Trivedi in her talk on ‘Love Revolution’ in India]