Web Portal Calculates Dowry for 'Pitch Black' Grooms, Jyotiraditya Scindia Tweets to PMO

Bhopal: "Your dream dowry amount awaits you. Be a man, and slog hard for it". The 'advice' may come as a surprise to many, but an online portal is actually calculating the monetary value of prospective grooms and encouraging them to 'work hard' for it.

If you log into the website, you will be asked to fill in details like age, caste, profession, salary, country where the person is employed and the profession of the man’s father.

Another parameter, which the portal asks for before calculating the result, is the “groom’s skin colour”. If one clicks on it, he/she may stumble on derogatory options like “pitch black (not visible on a moonless night)” and “wheatish (Almost white. Would need some Fair n Lovely)”.

The website suggests that a 25-year-old Brahmin IAS officer should get Rs 1 crore as dowry and he could also expect a lavish wedding, land property, expensive jewellery and also a foreign trip sponsored by the in-laws.

On the other hand, if you are in your late 30s and not in one of the most sought after jobs, your "dowry rate will be Rs 35 lakh". "It is a decent amount, but who wants to settle for decent when there is an entire range of awesomeness available? You could achieve an awesome dowry amount too. Remember the guy who right now deserves the highest dowry, even he at once upon a time started with a market price of zero," the website suggests.

Miffed to see a website promoting dowry, Congress' Guna MP Jyotiraditya Scindia has lodged a complaint with Prime Minister’s Office and Union Ministry of Women and Child Development.

“Someone just brought this site to my attention. Absolutely shameful! Let me remind the developers that giving or taking dowry is illegal in India. I urge the women welfare ministry and PM to take immediate action against this,” Scindia tweeted.

At a time when incidents of dowry deaths have been hitting headlines, such portals will certainly irk many.

According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data for 2016, Uttar Pradesh recorded 9.5 percent of the total cases of crimes registered under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) in the country, followed by Madhya Pradesh (8.9 percent), Maharashtra (8.8 percent) and Kerala (8.7 percent).

In 2015, match-making website Shaadi.com had introduced a similar calculator. However, instead of showing a groom’s dowry worth, the ‘calculator’ showed the statistics of dowry deaths in India. The special segment was a part of a campaign to spread social awareness.