Freako-matri-nomics!

23 is a dangerous age! Nowadays, when the phone rings and my friends have “good news” or “something exciting” to report, it’s usually that they have just gotten engaged or fixed the wedding date or are pregnant...

Now, this is great. It’s a big moment in their lives and I feel very touched that I am one the first people they think of sharing these things with. Being here in Russia, it’s reassuring to see that our friendship has stood the test of distance...if only because we are glued to Google Talk or Skype half the time!

With a surge in such good news and somethings exciting, there are bound to be mistakes when occasionally someone somewhere sends the wedding or engagement invite to my address in Delhi, where I have not lived for the last 4.5 years! Sounds innocent enough, right? Well it is...till my mom or some other older woman in the family gets to it and thereon for the next month or so, all sentences begin with the fatal, “Aanchal, you’re getting older now...and you’re not married...”

What ensues is a battle for my independence, a struggle to retain the right to determine my future, for Liberty, Freedom and Justice – the fight to, at any cost, escape an arranged marriage!

Let me make my position clear – I do see some merit in arranged marriages. For one, both people are ready to make a commitment so it saves a lot of heart-ache that might come with a relationship in which one party is ready to tie the knot but the other one isn’t quite there yet! The second benefit, which probably doesn’t come with relationships, is ‘even’ expectations. Both parties are fairly clear on what the other wants from the very start so conflict on expectations is practically squeezed out. Let’s just say, it’s like walking into a mall with a shopping list so the chances that you end up with something you didn’t want after investing a lot of time looking for it are pretty slim.

But just because I see some health benefits of alcohol doesn’t mean I’m ready for what could be the worst hangover of my life! After all, arranged marriages unlike long-tested relationships come with the twin-problems that economists call moral hazard and adverse selection!

What am I talking about?

Well for starters, when parents arrange a match, just because they feel it is good for us doesn’t mean it actually is! Am at no level doubting their saintly intentions but I can’t help wonder that since they wouldn’t have to live with the consequences of their mistake, they are perhaps less cautious with our lives! The classic principal-agent problem under moral hazard!

And my biggest fear with those who end themselves up on the arranged marriages market is adverse selection! (Look at the size of this industry in India and it would be unfair to call it anything but a market!)

In economics, adverse selection describes the behaviour of insurance seekers – a person who displays riskier behaviour or is at a greater risk of loss is more likely to take up insurance than a person who is more risk averse and has his act together. So similarly, a person who was unable to make a relationship work or was unable to find a partner through normal means is more likely to end up on the arranged marriages market than someone who was able to make it all work!

Of course, my analysis is rather naive and doesn’t consider the many complications that go behind making relationships work. But the truth is out – moral hazard and adverse selection exist in this market and for that reason, I want to stay as far away as I can from arranged marriages! This isn’t to say that arranged marriages don’t work. I know many people who are very happily (‘arranged’ly) married!

It is said that marriages are made in heaven so God has to make sure we meet ‘the one’. But He probably got tired of giving us low tolerance to alcohol or creating perfect chance coincidence meetings – giving us the same bad taste in movies or taking us to the same dance class where we could bond over how inelastic we are!

And then He came up with arranged marriages so He could just free-ride of our parents’ efforts and the world would still run...