One of the most important parts of the arranged marriage process is due diligence. This is done at various levels. First there is the parental due diligence – and the first thing that is done is to check if the counterparty’s parents and other close relatives are financially sound. Then there is a check run on the counterparty’s siblings and cousins – to make sure that moral fibre is of the highest quality. And last but not the least, there is personal DD, which is the most interesting.
Of particular interest is the counterparty’s past affairs. This wasn’t much in the limelight till about 10 years back when there was a case where a girl got her arranged fiance murdered since she wanted to marry her boyfriend. After that, people who had so far been in denial regarding people’s boyfriends and girlfriends woke up to the fact that they needed to check if the other party was single as claimed. Nowadays, people go great lengths in order to check this.
Last month I received a call from my friend who told me that one of his friends was “in the market” and was in the process of checking out an acquaintance of mine. So this friend asked me to do a background check on this acquaintance. And I called up one friend who called up another friend who confirmed that this girl was indeed very “decent” (at least that was the message I got- considering that there were two channels of communication before me, I don’t know what the actual message was) and I propagaed it (I promise I didn’t distort it).
Then, there is this uncle who is well-connected. Ok I’m digressing a bit – this is not about arranged marriage, but since we are on the topic of due diligence, this example deserves merit. So this uncle who is well connected wanted to do a background check on his daughter’s boyfriend. Not knowing any other common link, he did what he knew well – pulled strings. The boy used to work for a fairly large IT company and my uncle managed to get in touch with the boy’s HR director and got confidential character files pulled out in order to confirm that his daughter had indeed chosen a decent guy.
One other reason why due diligence may have in fact become easier is because now people post considerable amount of information online. A combination of orkut, facebook, linked-in, blog and twitter profiles is enough to determine enough about a person’s character, I think. And most people (at least in the market segment that I’m in) will have at least one of these. So all you need to do is to find someone who has access to this person’s orkut/facebook profiles and you are through. In fact, I’m planning to add my facebook, twitter, blog and linkedin links to my email signature when I write “expression of interest”/”expression of contact” mails (more about those mails in another post), thus saving the counterparty valuable time and money she might have otherwise spent on due diligence.
The problem with such widespread due diligence is that you need to keep people who you don’t like in your good books. Becauase due diligence works on a “no second chance” principle. Most people collect data from a number of sources. And if at least one of those sources says “indecent” then jai only. Death only are there for inherently unpopular people like me (i’ve recently discovered that I’m a hard person to like; and it takes people considerable effort to start liking me). The fact that I’ve one time or the other ended up pissing off at least half my extended family makes me wonder if I should exit this market and go back to the old-fashioned way of trying to find someone for myself by myself. That much said, I think I’ve applied enough maska on extended family members who I think are well-connected.
I think if this whole due diligence process gets documented well, then it could make for some interesting social network analysis. How does someone try to find someone who might know you? What is the average number of steps that one needs to follow in order to find someone who knows this counterparty? What kind of people are likely to be more involved in writing due diligence reports – people who are very well connected or the quiet types? Does an increased online presence have any effect on the amount of due diligence that various counterparties do?
I don’t know how one can find good data for this.
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