Friday, November 17, 2006

Marriage Portals: Mere Money Machines? In Focus - Bharatmatrimony.com

What’s your idea of a marriage portal? Cool? Friendly? Pleasant? Have you ever wondered about these adjectives, rather? Marriage portals can be obnoxious, irresponsible and dangerous! The portal in focus: Bharatmatrimony.com.

The profile of Mr X in Tamilmatrimony.com, a unit of BharatMatrimony.com was copied word-to-word by another member, Mr. Spurious. Clearway has evidence to this in the form of e-mail interactions with Bharatmatrimony.com where Mr X represented the issue to the portal and expected a response and some action. The first of such interactions occurred in the first half of October 2006. As of today, no action has been taken to bar Mr Spurious or to cancel his account.

Well, what’s the big deal about copying a profile? To put things in perspective, Mr X says he loves taking risks and he conveys the implicit message that he is honest in what he says about himself. And Mr Spurious says the same, using the same set of words. Mr X loses nothing when some stupid copy-pastes his profile. The loser would be the girl who trusts the profile of Mr Spurious as true and her family who arrange for her marriage with a fraud who steals words to project himself as a candid enterprising individual. If you were a parent or a guardian of a loving daughter, would you want to see her married to a rogue?

Clearway’s charge-sheet: Parents trust Bharatmatrimony.com with the lives of their kids when they post and browse for profiles of prospective brides and grooms. It is Bharatmatrimony’s responsibility to screen through profiles and prevent the cheats from luring women into the vicious webs they weave. Now that they claim to have entered some record books for the number of marriages that they have arranged for, it is a question worth asking if they really are worried about the Quality of marriages that they facilitate, as much as they do about the quantity. Perhaps, they believe in revenue rather than in sincere service?

If Bharatmatrimony doesn’t wake up from its coma and realise what’s at stake, Clearway will take every step to make sure the portal sits up and listens. And this is a message to every other irresponsible website that wouldn’t care any less for its patrons. A link to this post will be sent to Bharatmatrimony.com for its reference. Clearway awaits a response.