Return of Sarkari Naukri and Sarkari Babus

A couple of years when all was hunky dory in our recession free lives, my mother had found a reason to get worried about. To somehow get her only daughter married and according to her friends, a NRI working for an IT firm would be the best match. My mother often told me that how the world has changed topsy turvy since her days. During her marriageable days, getting your daughter married to someone working in a private firm was not opined to be a good watch. Parents were also wary of sending their daughters to a faraway land. Where as public jobs were supposed to be the safest, well paid and ensured a life long guarantee. IAS cadres had the highest rate in the dowry market followed by boys working in PSUs.

And how all that changed three decades later. Most of my school/ college gang, were settled in USA with either green card holders or IT NRI’s. I was the only one left and often asked by dozens that when will I get lucky like my friends. To top that my IT employer didnot even think me worthy enough to be sent on an onsite assignment. So I had to live with those additional queries about why I am not being sent abroad when ever far flung relative of everyone else is. Somehow, I managed to escape the NRI’s or you could say the poor NRI’s were saved from me when I met my husband. (prospective husband then!!) Atleast he was from IT and had been a NRI for 2 years, so I wasn’t that off the track.

Now, when I read about IIM grads going for public sector jobs and fathers looking for PSU working grooms and saying a definitive no - no to IT (and if you are a NRI especially in US – dude you have some serious chances of not finding a bride at all), I wonder that I didn’t even had to wait for my daughter’s marriage for the world to turn topsy turvy again. I read interesting news lately, wherein a man asks the court to reduce the alimony that he has to pay to his wife, as due to the recession he has to take a pay cut. So, even for a healthy divorce you now need a PSU working husband who can ensure a lifelong alimony with assured guarantee.

In a matter of few months, like the Sensex, the dowry market has turned upside down too. Sarkari Babus are back in demand with increased price of their shares and my poor IT brethren have become like penny stocks. The economic cycle had given rise to a new eligible groom cycle and I propose that we should also have a groom index now to track the eligibility of bachelors with respect to changes in economy. How about a Groomex??