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Tuesday, February 06, 2007
A P/E ratio for grooms?
Aadisht Khanna has begun a series of posts on dowry, and in the first of them, in which he recounts two instances of dowry being offered and turned down, he recounts:
The second rumour is about this guy who joined my employer in the same batch of campus recruitment as me. The story goes that somebody with all the right caste and astrological details and what not offered their daughter and fifteen megarupees of dowry. The guy’s parents practically laughed in their faces at this low offer.When Aadisht discussed this series of posts with me recently, I warned him that some people would inevitably think that by writing about dowry in this manner, he was endorsing the practice. Actually, needless to say, he is merely examining what dowry reveals about the changing world around us from an economist's perspective, without making value judgements. It promises to be a fascinating series, and I'm keeping my eye on his blog.
This is astounding. If we take only the guy’s pre-tax annual salary, fifteen megarupees is a valuation at a P/E ratio of approximately 19. And this was rejected. It looks like the market for grooms is as stretched as the market for securities these days.
