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The most popular trend in the institution of marriage in India is a mix of a love and arranged match. Its implications need to be studied in depth

It is said that a successful marriage requires falling in love many times but always with the same person. This idiom can be interpreted in different ways in India where the practice of marriage is determined by diverse factors such as region religion ethnicity caste and socio-economic status among others. For a long time a majority of marriages were ‘arranged’ in large parts of the country which meant that parents and other family members played a prominent role in selecting spouses for their children who were usually neither expected nor encouraged to form a relationship or even an acquaintance with their potential partners before getting married. Indeed once the alliance was finalised the wedding was regarded as the beginning rather than culmination of the negotiations that the family members indulged in while formalising the union between the couple.

In recent times however there has been a move away from marriages in which the prospective couples play no role in spouse selection. Such a shift has been fuelled by rising levels of education growing urbanisation and increasing age at marriage. Print and visual media have also played a role as they popularise the ideal of exercising agency in partner choice. These trends in nuptial arrangements are also revealed by the India Human Development Survey (IHDS) a survey of over 40000 households undertaken jointly by the National Council of Applied Economic Research and the University of Maryland. During the first wave of the IHDS in 2004-05 less than five per cent of the ever married women respondents aged 25-49 years reported selecting their spouses on their own while around 60 per cent reported some participation in spouse choice along with parental intervention. This figure went up to 66 per cent in the second wave of IHDS in 2011-12 but the proportion of self-choice marriages remained constant at five per cent.

Although the element of choice is emerging as a distinctive feature of marriages in the country the percentage of women who have had the opportunity to meet and get acquainted with their husbands at least a month before the wedding is modest. Indeed 65 per cent of the surveyed women reported that they met their husbands for the first time on the day of the wedding itself. Do self-choice marriages offer women greater autonomy than parent-arranged marriages? One way to assess this is in terms of the decision-making authority women have post their marriage.

In the IHDS women’s autonomy is measured in terms of their ability to take certain decisions in the household viz purchase of expensive items treatment of a sick child number of children to have and selecting a spouse for the child. Such an analysis is relevant because empirical evidence indicates that women in India like their counterparts in neighbouring Pakistan and Bangladesh have limited say in household decision-making. Research indicates that women in self-choice marriages have more authority as compared to those who married according to their parents’ wishes. Interestingly however even in arranged marriages women gain autonomy over time gradually catching up with women who selected their marital partners.

Another key question is: Are marriages of choice characterised by greater longevity than marriages bound by convention? In an article titled “Modern Lessons from Arranged Marriages” in 2013 The New York Times pointed out “whether arranged marriages produce loving respectful relationships is a question as old as the institution itself. In an era when 40-50 per cent of all American marriages end in divorce some marriage experts are asking if arranged marriages produce better relationships in the long run…than those in which people find each other on their own and romance is the foundation”. In fact Robert Epstein a senior research psychologist at the American Institute for Behavior Research and Technology in California avers that the key to the success of arranged marriages in India lies in parental intervention with parents “screening for deal breakers” while anticipating and preventing anything that could go wrong in advance to drive the couple apart.

However the jury is still out on the criteria for evaluating the quality of marriage as decision-making authority and longevity are only two of the many aspects that influence marital relationships. Keera Allendorf a sociologist at Indiana University Bloomington who studies marriages in India and Nepal too argues that marriages must be assessed on parameters relevant to the local cultural context. Clearly the popular marriage type in India is a hybrid that has the characteristics of both love and arranged marriages. What are the implications of this trend for the institution of marriage and for society at large? It seems demographic surveys on marriage in the country have hitherto only touched the tip of the iceberg and need to venture deeper into uncharted territory.

(The writers Anupma Mehta and  Manjistha Banerji are associated with the National Council of Applied Economic Research. Views expressed in this article are personal)

The survey covered 1049 units in 20 states and Delhi ranking them on their investment potential based on the six major metrics. 

The efforts towards improving the business climate started some years ago and deepened when the government’s flagship initiatives Make in India and Start-Up India took centre stage. The department of industrial promotion and policy (DIPP) had rolled out the Business Reform Action Plan in 2015. India subsequently leapfrogged a commendable 30 places to get placed amongst the top 100 countries according to the World Bank’s Doing Business 2018 report. But have we arrived where we should?

The National Council of Applied Economic Research designed an index in 2016 using six metrics—land labour infrastructure economic climate political stability and governance. This was intended to give a granular picture of the investment climate. This state investment potential index (N-SIPI) incorporated the perceptions of entrepreneurs based on survey of industrial units. In the third edition N-SIPI 2018 feedback on the goods and services tax (GST)—the most important initiative on unifying India into a massive common market—was added. The survey covered 1049 units in 20 states and Delhi ranking them on their investment potential based on the six major metrics. Interestingly the rankings are broadly consistent with another study on the performance of states in terms of their service delivery performance . Such comparisons suggest that the N-SIPI rankings based on perceptions and secondary data are reasonably robust.

There is also merit in recognising the strength of the states on individual metrics. For example land by itself is a critical issue and is perceived to be complex because of the maze of regulations. However strikingly most states found no difficulty in acquiring land for industrial use except five: Bihar Jharkhand Karnataka Maharashtra and Odisha. In these states the percentage of respondents facing difficulties ranged from a little less than 30% to a little over 70%.

Unlike land perception on labour constraints had wide differences across the states. States like Jharkhand Karnataka Himachal Pradesh and Assam were at one extreme with more than 40% of the respondents expressing concern regarding the availability of skilled labour. Meanwhile companies located in Gujarat Haryana Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal had more favourable views. Respondents have also shown major variation in perception of labour quality. Haryana and Gujarat continue to be viewed as the best states in this regard.

In another surprise labour relations are not seen to be a problem for nearly 66% of the respondents across the states. Very diverse states such as Haryana West Bengal and Gujarat were the best performers here while Karnataka Telangana and Andhra Pradesh have noted moderate to severe constraints. Labour laws have been a constraining factor in Maharashtra Karnataka Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. And while Gujarat reported no problems Chhattisgarh reported severe problema.

Power is a critical component of infrastructure that supports industrial advancement. The survey found that power availability was relatively good with no significant difficulty faced by 78% of respondents on an average. States such as Chhattisgarh Haryana Punjab and Karnataka reported an excellent supply of power while states that lagged behind included Uttarakhand Jharkhand and West Bengal. With respect to water availability the situation looked best in the case of Himachal Pradesh Karnataka and Haryana. Surprisingly despite being a coastal state nearly one-fifth of the severely constrained firms belonged to Maharashtra while Uttarakhand emerged as the most severely water-constrained state. The performance of states concerning road and rail connectivity was not an issue with over two-thirds of the surveyed firms while a little over one-fifth shared a moderate concern on the issue. Yet again Haryana Himachal Pradesh Karnataka Kerala and Rajasthan did very well while a developed state like Telangana was ranked lowest in the perception of good road and rail connectivity in the state.

The perception on industrial policy is critically important to promote efficiency and productivity. A well-designed industrial policy percolates through different levers such as special support to a select group of industries establishment of special economic zones to attract foreign participation or investment privatization of public sector units and promoting public-private ventures. Here a high proportion of positive responses came from Uttarakhand Haryana Gujarat and West Bengal. On the other hand Karnataka Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra appeared to be the poorest players in this regard.

GST was introduced in July 2017 and N-SIPI 2018 found that more than 40% of firms faced moderate to severe difficulty and 43% did not perceive any impact of the GST policy at all. This negatively impacted business operations severely according to 17% of the firms. Unexpectedly Bihar emerged as the most GST-friendly state followed by Gujarat while firms from Madhya Pradesh Kerala Himachal Pradesh Andhra Pradesh Telangana Uttarakhand and Tamil Nadu faced significantly negative impact. Of these the worst hit was Andhra Pradesh with 58% of respondents crying foul. On the related aspect of e-way bills the majority of the respondents reported the impact being positive. The impact is remarkably good for Jharkhand (77%) followed by West Bengal and Bihar while there is no perceived impact in Telangana Maharashtra and Gujarat.

The findings demonstrate that states have to work hard to even remain where they are as the rankings are relative competitive and in flux. They also show that learning lessons from other states is a good way forward.

Anushree Sinha and Saurabh Bandyopadhyay are respectively senior fellow and associate fellow NCAER

Minor ports in India do not act as a growth engine unlike in developed countries. Mere development of infrastructure will not make them financially viable. Strategy must focus on creating economic epicentres around minor ports

India has a coastline of 7500 km and is studded with 12 major ports and close to 200 minor ports. However about 60 per cent of the total cargo traffic is handled by major ports and the rest by intermediate and minor ports. The volume of cargo within the intermediate/minor ports are also unevenly distributed — bulk of the cargo moves through a few ports while the rest of the ports are utterly under-utilised.

Of all the minor ports only 61 handle export-import cargo and others are mainly fishing harbours. Even out of these 61 only six enjoy rail connectivity upto the port. Another eight to 10 need last-mile connectivity. Even road connectivity is a serious bottleneck. This highlights the necessity for an integrated planning for port location along with rail and road investments.

However as revenue growth from cargo movement in minor ports are minimal/modest operating surplus from minor ports are not large enough to justify large-scale infrastructure upgradation in minor ports when public resource is scarce. Thus minor ports in India do not act as an engine of growth unlike global counterparts in developed countries or in fast growing countries.

In India nearly whole of the revenue of minor ports comes from cargo movement. On the other hand the successful business model for minor ports in developed/developing countries operates on the premises that this is only another source of revenue minor ports. These ports have  drawn lessons from the technological changes in recent years in production and transport systems as a whole and maritime transport in particular. They have reoriented the working of minor ports in development and diversified the sources of revenue to meet the challenges posed by these new innovations. Let us elaborate on their business model.

In the light of the globalised world economy the role of organisers as well as providers of transport services is changing. A special position in the integral global system has been acquired by logistics which allows management of goods and information flows from the source of raw materials to the consumers of finished products.

The role of sea carriers is changing too. In addition to their conventional transport function they are involved in organising the movement of cargo. Hand-in-hand with these changes the role of ports is also subject to change: Apart from their conventional operations (such as loading

transhipment and discharge) ports are developing into consolidation centres in which numerous other operations (tallying sorting refining/ improving the semi-manufactures and products) are performed. As a result of this altered role ports are assuming the function of logistics and distribution along with their traffic commercial and industrial function combining transportation by sea road railway inland waterways and air as the more recent development shows.

This development brings about a change in the traditional functions of seaports that have so far performed primarily the traffic merchant and industrial functions. In modern logistics and supply-chain management a new function — the logistical and distributional function — has joined the traditional group of functions.

Notably the seaports are acting not only as the point of handling or reloading the goods on their transport route but also as logistical and distributional centres that function as intermodal hubs in the supply chains offering value-added and door-to-door service to the customers. The success of a port in this context depends to a great extent on its ability to attract global regional and local centres for various types of activities.

These value-added activities in the port sector play an important role as the source of revenue and perform a key role in ensuring lasting economic growth of a port and its hinterland.

This trend is true even in the case of successful hub ports like Rotterdam and Singapore where they have realised that the presence of logistics centre goes a long way in increasing the competitiveness of the port. These ports regard the logistics centre function to be as vital as the traditional cargo-handling function in promoting the port as a full-fledged logistics hub.

Both logistics companies and shippers agree that value-added services in logistics centres are important in supply-chain management. The pressures of value added logistics (VAL) services in the logistics chain have increased the demands of logistics centre behind port areas.

This financial model is now being replicated elsewhere particularly in case of minor ports in Europe and the United States. For instance relatively smaller ports such as Le Havre Rouen and Barcelona in Europe are developing themselves as regional logistics centres.

In the Port of Rouen where most of the land set aside for logistics service has already been leased out the logistics zone has attracted business rapidly by offering shippers savings on their transportation storage and personnel costs.

Indeed there are many opportunities for small ports to function as logistics centres by making extensive use of their location and land holdings. A number of smaller ports on the west coast of North America have grown by converting land no longer used for marine cargo handling into logistics centres and foreign trade zones.

The Port of Astoria the Port of Longview and Port of Vancouver (in the United States not in Canada) have drawn in multinationals by developing new logistics centres on land that was formerly used for commercial marine operations. As such a substantial portion of their revenue now comes from property and facility leasing.

The Port of Olympia has also developed a logistics centre and is using it to its advantage. Though decreased ports-of-call means that fewer than three dozen ships call each year business is booming. The same model is now being replicated in many minor/intermediate ports of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) region where emphasis has shifted from traditional cargo handling facilities to value-added logistics services to remain competitive in the regional market.

With the Government having launched a series of measures most notably the Sagarmala initiative the focus is mainly on development of infrastructure at the ports. Since many of the non- major ports have large land banks they are ideally suited to be developed as logistics hub. Mere development of the physical infrastructure or connectivity with hinterland will not make the minor ports financially viable. Right strategy would be to create economic epicentres around the minor ports with world-class infrastructure.

(The writers are associated with the National Council of Applied Economic Research. Views expressed here are personal)

It’s troubling that women have a higher rate of mental ailments than men. The need is to guide them so that they can emerge from the inner recesses of conservative and patriarchal households

Women in India have traditionally been perceived to be two-three times more vulnerable than men to mental ailments stemming from psycho-social factors and extensive biological and hormonal changes they experience throughout their lives. This belief has now been substantiated by data from the National Mental Health Survey (NMHS) 2015-16 which validates fear that unrelenting physical and mental pressures are gradually pushing many Indian women over the mental precipice.

The survey which was conducted by the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS) Bengaluru and supported by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare spanned 12 States representing different regions yet revealed surprisingly similar outcomes. The NMHS documents female predominance for depression (affecting three per cent of the female respondents as compared to 2.4 per cent of their male counterparts) neurotic and stress-related disorders (suffered by 4.3 per cent of females as against 2.7 per cent males) and desolation and phobic anxiety resulting from divorce separation or widowhood (again afflicting 9.8 per cent of females in contrast to only 2.2 per cent of males).

One of the primary causes of psychological distress among women is their vulnerability to sexual violence which is affirmed by both waves of the India Human Development Survey (IHDS) a multi-topic panel study of over 40000 households conducted jointly by the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) and University of Maryland in 2004-05 and 2011-12 respectively. The IHDS found that 20 per cent of the women in the respondent households complained of sexual harassment in 2005 which went up to 31 per cent of the female respondents in the same households in 2012. Moreover for both men and women the perception of sexual harassment and associated mental torment increased by almost 10 percentage points between 2005 and 2012 in the same neighbourhoods. The assumption that many of these female respondents could be potential victims of mental morbidities may be corroborated by the 58th Round of the National Sample Survey (NSS) on “Disabled Persons in India” (July-December 2002).

The NSS recorded that among women who were born with normal mental sensibilities but contracted some form of mental illness subsequently 4.8 per cent and 23.5 per cent did so in their early 20s and mid-30s respectively. The corresponding figures for the male respondents with mental disabilities were conspicuously lower.

A BBC news story released in February 2017 while showing disturbing pictures of women in a mental health ward at the Institute of Human Behaviour and Allied Sciences in Delhi claimed that mental illness is “not the only war the women fight here-the stigma of social acceptance and gender discrimination is a major cause of their trauma”. A probe revealed that many of these inmates abandoned here by their family members or picked up from the streets by local police were suffering from post-traumatic psychosis caused by harrowing life experiences like rape child abuse or untimely death of a parent.

Even more alarming is a report on ‘The Global Burden of Diseases Study 1990-2016’ published recently in the Lancet Public Health Journal. This report states that in 2016 though India accounted for only 17.8 per cent of the global population it recorded 36.6 per cent of suicides among women across the world going up from 25.3 per cent in 1990.

Further suicide death rate for women in India for 2016 is 15 per 100000 women which is more than twice the corresponding global rate of seven per 100000 women. What are the compelling reasons that drive a large cohort of India’s women over the edge? According to Rakhi Dandona one of the lead authors of the study a staggering 71.2 per cent of the female suicides are by married women in the age-group of 15-39 years. Lack of agency to realise their aspirations economic dependence illiteracy early marriage and young motherhood all take a toll on them.

How can we bring these women back from the brink and prevent them from surrendering to life’s challenges? The answer lies in redefining health in accordance with the gender perspective and the concomitant socio-economic and cultural determinants of mental health as propounded in the WHO’s Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion (1986). Other measures entail implementing affordable accessible and women-friendly health policies enhancing budgetary allocations for mental healthcare and ensuring timely diagnosis of psychiatric morbidity for women across the country.

Another step in the right direction is the initiative by the NIMHANS to train Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs) to act as interfaces between the female community and the public health system by counselling women on sensitive issues like pregnancy safe deliveries and even interpersonal relationships. However the key intervention lies in guiding women to lead more fulfilling lives by emerging from the inner recesses of conservative and patriarchal households and joining the social mainstream where they can verbalise their inner conflicts and dilemmas without plunging into a mental morass.

(The writer Anupma Mehta is Editor at the National Council of Applied Economic Research. Views expressed here are personal)