Shruti Rajagopalan & the Stable Marriage problem

All Societies face a 'stable marriage problem'- how do you pair off heterosexuals of a given cohort such that they form bonds stable enough to accumulate joint assets and raise children?

 Speaking generally, a young woman can find a sexual partner with relatively little effort. The difficulty is getting that partner to pool assets and commit to raising kids together. It may be that the more sex the two of them have, the more reluctant the partner is to get hitched. Why buy the cow, etc?

Another difficulty has to do with 'try before you buy'. Young women may find that men prefer the 'trying' to the 'buying'. She may do so too. But, there is a good reason to think that a person who has had a very large number of sexual partners may be less likely to 'settle' on the very next partner. Why? They lack a proper 'stopping rule'. It has become a habit to move on.

Economists have long studied the 'Secretary problem'. When should you  stop interviewing people to fill a particular role? The optimal solution is to have a 'stopping rule'. Reject a predetermined number of applicants and then hire the first one who is better or as good as the best of the rejected. The problem is that where both parties are using a stopping rule, they may simply skip this stage if they think they will be pre-rejected. You don't want to be part of someone else's 'discovery process'. Thus you stipulate for candidates who have already passed their 'stopping' point, know the market, and are ready to pull the trigger.

Still, information is being thrown away. The problem is that rejecting candidates before moving on is sub-optimal. It would be better to keep them in the pool till the decision is made. But this is repugnant in 'dating'. It also creates a 'concurrency' problem. You could have the equivalent of a 'property chain'. Nobody can sell and therefore buy till the weakest link of the chain is ready to exchange contracts. Interestingly, the economist, Kaushik Basu, has mentioned something similar in the matrimonial field. Till the most desirable couple pair off or make other choices, everybody else is stuck.

Clearly these sorts of problems can be alleviated by mechanisms of various sorts. It is less repugnant if there is a 'marriage season' where people see a number of possible suitors as part of a social process. By the end, there is some 'market clearing' type of activity. Nobody's reputation is damaged though some may feel the process is humiliating or that it causes anxiety. But, properly done, the thing could be a rite of passage and have cultural and humanistic overtones.  The thing could be a Jane Austen novel. The trouble with the British 'marriage season', of course, was that it left a lot of women as spinsters. They simply weren't rich enough. Thus after a failed Season at Bath, some damsels would have to make up a 'fishing fleet' to the Indies. But that too might fail. There was a trade off between getting optimal matches for some and not clearing the market thus condemning others to be old maids. Could there be a truly market clearing mechanism which ensured all women desiring to be married ended up with an acceptable husband? The danger with having unwed women around was that they might break up existing marriages or else go to the bad. Men did not matter so much. If losers don't pass on their genes, that's probably a good thing. But a woman capable of child bearing can't be stopped from having a baby even if it is unlikely to be well provided for.

Different Societies have evolved different social institutions to address this problem. Within a given Society more than one sort of mechanism exists and there is migration between them or mimetic effects modify them.

The Indian 'jati'- or endogamous 'sub-caste'- is an example of such a mechanism. It is by no means stagnant. Mimetic effects cause it to reconfigure across society. At the same time, the 'varna'- or hierarchy of jatis- itself flattens out and its compartments become more porous- because its primary purpose is to promote stable marriages.

Some economists don't understand this because they believe that endogamy is a feature of less developed economies. It will disappear as development occurs. This is a foolish view. Mechanisms are relatively independent of the Economic sub-structure in precisely the same way that cultural and religious norms are independent. Oddly, Stalin's philosophy affirms this obvious truth. Yet some 'free market' economists are more backward than Stalin in this respect.

Consider the case of Shruti Rajagopalan who writes in Bloomberg-

Even as the Netflix show “Indian Matchmaking” has grown into a global hit, it’s incensed many Indians.

Who would have been incensed anyway coz they are Indians not Norwegians- unless they are Indian-Norwegians because Norway won't let them hit their little kiddies even if they are as naughty as Rahul Baba.

The issue isn’t that most couples don’t go for goat yoga on their first date. Critics accuse the show of stereotyping and commodifying women,

That bit about stereotyping is true. Why were no bearded ladies featured? But the women weren't commodified. I couldn't buy a single one of them. Netflix could learn a thing or two from QVC. 

lacking diversity and promoting a backwards vision of marriage where astrologers and meddling parents are more influential than the preferences of brides and grooms.

Astrologers had no say on this series. Parents seem to have been ineffective in 'meddling'.

They complain that the series, which follows matchmaker Sima Taparia as she jets between Mumbai and the U.S. to arrange marriages, perpetuates an outdated, offensive and regressive marriage market.

How? Does she create the demand for her services? Or do people seek her out? In what manner is marriage 'regressive'? Do progressives really prefer not to marry? I suppose the real estate market, too, is regressive. The State should provide housing to all as a fundamental human right.

In fact, the real problem may be their discomfort with the way marriage works in India, with social stability prized over individual happiness.

But half of those shown were in America. It seems the real discomfort is with marriage existing and Society existing and the Universe existing.

It’s true that India’s 1.35 billion citizens occupy different centuries simultaneously.

Nonsense! They occupy the same century- worse luck.

A small fraction still practices child marriage, with some communities holding betrothal ceremonies as soon as a girl is born.

But since there is no stigma on widow remarriage, this has ceased to matter.

At the other end of the spectrum, there is growing acceptance of queer relationships, divorce and even avoiding marriage altogether.

But such things have always been around.

But most Indian marriages are still arranged.

Why? This is the question an economist needs to answer.

That’s because, for the most part, the purpose of marriage in Indian society is not love

Nonsense! It is love of a type that will endure and mature and extend to children and grandchildren. No doubt, there may be sexual attraction, or 'assortative mating', or some other angle, but the aim is the same. Nobody gets married with the expectation of hating their spouse and being ghastly to the kiddies.

but family, children and social stability expressed by confining marriage within caste boundaries.

But castes, in India, are explicitly endogamous. They were created for no other purpose than to facilitate marriage.

According to the 2011-12 India Human Development Survey, only about 5% of Indians marry outside their caste.

But castes have reconfigured. We are not comparing like with like.

The share has remained remarkably stable over the decades since independence, even though India’s economy and society have progressed in many other ways. 

Because castes have reconfigured.

Studies show that the education levels of the prospective bride or groom don’t make marriages across castes more likely.

Because one way castes have reconfigured is by stipulating for spouses with this Credential. It is not the case, as in America, that people go to College so as to access a larger pool of potential mates. Rather girls have to take a degree while waiting for marriage.

Even college-educated, urban, middle-class Indians show a strong preference to marry within caste.

Because caste is a mechanism for superior matrimonial outcomes. That is what it is geared to.

This isn’t only a matter for Hindus either. Muslims in South Asia marry within their biradari or jaat — a stand-in for Hindu caste.

This mechanism is not dependent on Religion. It either exists because it works well or it does not exist at all.

The fact is, there always were people who did not marry according to caste. But, in India, they were less fertile than those who did. So endogamous marriage out competed other types of marriage and now only about 5 per cent of marriages are not caste-based. However, caste itself has reconfigured because its primary purpose is solving the stable marriage problem.

Indian Christians differentiate between those who converted and those who came to India centuries ago; they marry based on whatever one’s caste was before conversion.

Nonsense! They marry based on money and looks same as everybody else. But, for long established communities, this can be done through their own mechanism for endogamy.

The reason Guyanese-born Nadia faces a limited set of options in the show is not because of her South American birth, but because Indians who were shipped as indentured laborers to the New World were mostly lower castes, or so perceived.

Actually, Guyana has 11 per cent Forward Caste and about 40 per cent Medium Caste and only about 25 percent 'menial caste'. They are not looked down on at all. Cheddi Jagan was Kurmi- a perfectly respectable caste. In any case, once one owns and cultivates land for a generation or two, one is farmer caste. The problem in Guyana or Trinidad was that social development was faster and so educated people like Nadia's family had moved too far from the endogamous mechanisms available previously. The solution, if they are Hindu, is to join the local branch of the Arya Samaj or ISKCON or whatever is convenient. If Nadia can speak a little Hindi, play that up. But, looking the way she does, she certainly won't remain on the shelf for long.

American-born Indians are almost always upper caste and are highly valued in the Indian marriage market, despite or maybe because of, their “foreign” status.

They are highly valued because the spouse can emigrate to a richer country where they can earn more.

The fact that “Indian Matchmaking” packages women as slim, tall, fair, presentable, likable, flexible and so on is, once again, a consequence of using marriage to preserve caste lines.

Very true! They should package women as fat, ugly, and hateful. But what has that to do with 'preserving caste lines'? Everybody was offered a soulmate of a different caste. After all, hypergamy is always acceptable. Nobody says no to marrying above themselves.

When the purpose of marriage is to find love, companionship and compatibility, then the focus is on the characteristics of the individual. The marriage market is akin to a matching market, similar to Tinder or Uber.

 No. There is a 'stable marriage problem' which Shruti must know about. Wikipedia says- 'Given n men and n women, where each person has ranked all members of the opposite sex in order of preference, marry the men and women together such that there are no two people of opposite sex who would both rather have each other than their current partners. When there are no such pairs of people, the set of marriages is deemed stable.' Endogamy is a mechanism for solving the stable marriage problem. On the one hand it changes characteristics in the two sets by enforcing a separating equilibrium. On the other, it eliminates strategic preference falsification. What I mean is, to be part of this mechanism you have to change your ways such that the other side is doing better than just looking at a random dude. Also, you can't pretend that you'll get married only after lots of sex and then lots more sex and then like honey? why don't you support me while I try to write my Great American Novel? There's no point playing mind games if you want to use this mechanism.

But, in a world where marriage exists to maintain caste lines,

The reverse is the case. Caste exists only for marriages to be more stable. One may as well say 'in a world where democracy exists to maintain White Supremacy'

the nature of the marriage market

or of democracy

more closely resembles a commodity market,

coz, votes are bought and sold by shape-shifting lizards from Planet X.

where goods are graded into batches.

Shruti herself ordered a dozen husbands from her local Caste meat-market.

Within every batch, the commodity is substitutable — as in wheat or coffee exchanges.

Very true. Three of Shruti's husbands turned out to be defective. She returned them under the warranty scheme and got properly functioning replacements.

This is why reading matrimonial ads or listening to Sima going over biodatas — a kind of matrimonial resume — is triggering for many Indian women.

Which ones? Surely there were some women who really were beautiful and 'samskari' who got hitched to handsome billionaires and who went on to lead a wonderful lives? Looking at matrimonial ads may afford such women many warm memories of their own social elevation. On the other hand, there may be women who have had horrible marriages. They look at the same ads and think- 'another innocent to the slaughter'. But the fact remains, if you are beautiful, some doors open for you. If they are 'arranged marriage' doors, then, depending on how good your caste is, there may be added security in going through them. But this is not always the case. That is why there is a market for marriage brokers who investigate clients and do due diligence on their assets and liabilities and so forth.

Once caste, family, economic strata, looks, height, etc., are graded, all women within a particular grade are considered substitutes for one another, primarily to continue the family line.

What is the grading algorithm? Did the Netflix show actually use any such thing? No. Why? The answer is that the thing is mathematically intractable. It is also the reason we can't get rid of markets by using a 'labour' numeraire. As for 'continuing the family line'- either women want to have babies or they don't. If they do, family lines continue. This isn't necessarily a victory for Patriarchy or Heterosexuality or Caste or Religion. It's just Biology.

As for outrage over the show’s heterosexual focus, some of it is performative.

In other words, sham.

Caste pressures are also present in the LGBTQ community in India. Indeed, one hot-button issue is whether, if same-sex marriage were made legal, regressive caste endogamy would permeate an otherwise progressive queer movement. When gay activist Harish Iyer’s mother posted a same-sex matrimonial ad for her son, she added, “caste no bar, (though Iyer preferred)” (Iyer refers to a sub-caste of Tamil-speaking Brahmins). Even queer upper-caste Indians set up first dates at vegetarian restaurants to signal caste preferences.

This is because Marriage is different from a hook-up. Vegetarians may not want to live with non-vegetarians but may have no objection to having sex with them.

Indeed, much of the angst over these issues of caste, lack of diversity and misogyny has nothing to do with the kinds of problems most Indians actually face when getting married.

I would go a step further. Indian origin people in America are saying 'back home, we were rich and super upper caste. Please don't call me a slumdog. I iz high caste, and actually very tall and slim and fair skinned back in my home country'. This is a variant of the cab driver telling you back in his home country he was a heart surgeon- which he was in the sense that he cut the hearts out of his victims while laughing maniacally till NATO sent in troops.

It reflects the adoption of progressive Western ideas by elite Indian Netflix viewers and critics.

Hilarious! 'Progressive Western Ideas' forsooth! Remind me again, which ones were they? Slavery? Genocide of indigenous peoples? Jim Crow? The very word 'caste' as referring to a racial hierarchy is Western. But the Mexican caste system was not created for the specific purpose of solving the stable marriage problem.

The problem is also that unlike other regressive trends, the emphasis on caste has not weakened even though more and more Indians today have received modern educations.

Because their castes insist on it for matrimonial purposes.  This is largely a waste of money.

Indian elites are mostly frustrated with the slow pace of change in a society they otherwise dominate and thrive in. That, however, cannot be completely blamed on Sima Taparia.

Indian elites have been getting frustrated at the slow pace of change for thousands of years. Then they suddenly find out they aren't elite at all. Change has occurred and, as a result, their dominance is over. That's when people have to fall back on caste. But this means hard work and getting qualifications and being polite and getting married rather than giving b.js at truck stops for money to spend on crack like all the other losers who went to Yale.