Economic progress and divorces

For years, India held this moral aura around itself when it came to divorces. America had divorces and India had Culture.

I look around and see that a statistically significant percentage of my friends are divorced. It is the inevitable price of economic progress. There are many reasons for each individual divorce, but one factor cuts across all of them: financial independence of women. The reason India didn’t have divorces earlier was that women were not financially independent. God knows that they have had enough reasons to walk out on their husbands.

But, globally, there seems to be one more interesting force at work. This is the Jha hypothesis.

Marriage as an institution is thousands of years old. When the concept of marriage was created “for life”, life expectancy was hardly 22 years. Men got married at 15 and “for life” meant 7 years. Today, “for life” can mean anything from 40-70 years of married life. That can be a long time. And that wasn’t the original deal.