Bucking global trends, marriage in India endures. Here’s why |
Marriage is having a bit of a moment in the news cycle. If Jaya Bachchan, married for 52 years, told journalist Barkha Dutt that marriage is an outdated institution, then her colleague, Kajol suggested it should come with an expiry date with an option of renewal.
Just days earlier, Upasana Kameini Konidela was interacting with students at IIT, Hyderabad when she asked a question: How many wanted to get married? More men than women raised their hands. “The women seemed far more career-focused,” she remarked on X.
Clickbait? Hardly. These stray remarks are backed by global trends where marriage rates are plunging, with the decline being led by women who are clocking out, leading to what Financial Times called a “relationship recession” in January this year.
In China, where an authoritarian government junked its one-child policy adopted in 1979 and junked in 2015 to boost declining fertility rates, marriage rates crashed by 20% in 2024 over the previous year to reach its lowest level since 1986. Earlier this week, the government decided to withdraw exemptions granted three decades ago to contraceptives and remove taxes on childcare and marriage services.
In South Korea, which has the world’s lowest fertility rate, the number of marriages has