Need for BRA

 Before you start getting any funny ideas, let me make it very clear- this write up is only about establishing a Bride Rating Agency. 

If there is a need for credit rating agencies like S & P, Moody’s, Crisil, then it is high time we have agencies to rate the potential brides and bridegrooms also. What is more important for a middle class person—good finance or good marriage? Ideally it should be both. First and foremost, good marriage and then good finance. Such a rating agency will be a boon to the growing Indian middle class, in many ways. This will be the best way to ensure that ‘arranged marriages’ will continue to be accepted by the educated new generation.

Some of the parameters for bride rating could be, inter-alia, the following, for which, suitable scores and weights can be assigned.

a.         Appearance---complexion, height, weight, shape, physical beauty.

b.        Health—Doctors’ certificates --details of any chronic illness, structural fitness, and reproductive potential, mental stability.

c.         Personal profile / disposition—education, general nature, attitudinal flexibility, value system and world view, passions, hobbies, pets, and prejudices.

b.        Family background---the facts only---no need of any score.

c.         Financial position—of the individual, her family, and the degree of family support. Any congenital illness running in the family? How is the family seen by their proximate neighbours?

d.        Bride’s mother—her health (both physical and mental), education, general nature, attitudinal flexibility, value system and world view, passions, hobbies, pets, and prejudices.

An expert panel of physicians, psychologists, mature and happily married couples and private investigators will be able to give a workable rating. The rating exercise could also have something akin to double blind clinical studies. Online matrimonial sites can display the ratings along with the profiles. A matrimonial company can also form a subsidiary for marriage insurance, say for the first 15 years of marriage, and another for counseling and yet another for divorce assistance. Rating agencies should not be allowed to have any such subsidiaries to avoid any conflict of interest. A bridegroom rating agency can also be formed on similar lines.

There can be a sizeable fee charged for getting a rating. The fee can be gradually reduced as

economies of scale kick in, and the number of raters increase.