More surprising, perhaps, is just how rare divorce still is in India. Only
about one in 100 marriages here ends in divorce compared with much higher
percentages in the U.S. and in western European countries such as France and
Germany. But the divorce rate is now rising in this country. In urban India
it has doubled over the past five years, despite the fact that failed
marriages remain a cause for shame in much of the country and that divorced
people, especially women, continue to face fierce social stigmatization and
often find it hard to remarry.
One reason for the rise in the divorce rate is that educated Indian women -
or at least educated, middle-class women - now have the option. "Women don't
want to lie down and take it anymore," says Julie George, a Pune-based
lawyer in matrimonial cases. "There is a lot more independence, freedom.
Women who work are financially independent and aren't prepared to put up
with a husband who harasses them."
Secondshaadi.com ("shaadi" means marriage in Hindi and a number of other
south Asian languages) gets around this problem by targeting the very people
other sites find unpopular. "The idea was to attack a niche that had not
been done," says Pahwa. "Divorce rates are going up in India and a lot of
people are getting divorced at a very young age - even 35 or so. It's wrong
to tell them that they can't get married again."
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/1,8599,1640200,00.html?xid=rss-world&iid=sphere-inline-bottom
