Trailing End of the Middle Class at Shaadi Online

Recently, the TV program Shaadi Online has been quite a buzz in the “non-resident Pakistani” circles. More often than not, the program is discussed and watched for its interesting participants who come on screen to tell something about themselves and about their quest for a life partner. The participants’ simplicity and sometimes their lack of sophistication is usually a reason enough to have a quick laugh at their expense. I too have been entertained by the keen Shaadi Onliners who would go on international TV to talk about all that they need in a life partner and all that they have to offer to a life partner. Recently, intrigued by this popularity, I followed a link to the actual web site from an ad on one of the Pakistani newspaper web sites. I was happy to find out that I could search the database of registered candidates without registering. So I just went ahead and started putting in various ranges of age and religions to see who was in there. I confess that my initial curiosity was only to see all those who are in there and be entertained, but as I searched, I learnt that there was more to this than humor aimed at people who did not have it as good as I did.

All of a sudden, it occurred to me that what I was seeing was the Trailing End of the Middle Class in Pakistan. And I do not say this in any condescending way or out of an illusion of superiority. I state this as a fact. I believe (like many others) that a primary indicator of a society’s well-being is the size of its middle-class. I strongly believe that Pakistan is an elitist society where those that enjoy any kind of social mobility, make sure that the path that they took is destroyed, lest someone else follows suit. Those that are already in the privileged circles are another sad story altogether. Maybe with resources in limited supply and also with our general sense of selfishness at play, we are not too keen on creating opportunities for others to improve their lives. At Shaadi Online I saw people who are entering in to the fold of the middle class from the relatively lower class domain. I saw people earning Rs. 20,000 per month as computer business owners in their city of birth (which may not be a place on the map of the world). I saw women standing up for their right to find themselves a life partner, without the pseudo-cultural constraints of parents struggling with the stress of an unmarried daughter. I saw people not weakened by their lack of command over the English language, in exercising their right to go out there and ask for what they want in a life partner. In all, for the first time I saw “people”, our people, regular folks trying to make a living, trying to improve their condition and while doing all that, having some fun. That says something about the resilience of the spirit of our people. I did not see someone complaining that living within a Rs. 15,000 paycheck is impossible while I my self remember cribbing about it while I was living with my parents and was driving my father’s car. All I saw was people proudly wearing their hard-earned incomes, their businesses and “private services” on their sleeves. These were people with families to support and were looking to add to the list of their loved ones that already depended on them.

To me this was an uplifting and encouraging experience. I found all this to be an indicator of things moving in the right direction. I can not say if this positive indicator can be attributed to the present government or to the decades of urbanization or to the inherent desire of our people to improve and progress. The bottom line is that people are moving in to the middle class and that is all that matters. The thing to notice is that people are going online, using computers, being gainfully employed and are comfortable enough to put themselves out there for all to see. Or, to put it another way, we as a society are beginning to employ our people constructively and are becoming more and more comfortable with our people for who they are and not judging them for not being any thing like the English-speaking upper classes that serve as an aspiration to us all. If my understanding is correct, then I feel that we are headed in the right direction.

As an example of the elitism that plagues our country and society, I can quote two observations that I came across when I moved to the US. Firstly, any Pakistani that I met here was at the maximum separated by one degree from me (reference, the six degrees of separation principle). Every one I met, either knew someone I knew in Pakistan or simply was an old acquaintance. The term “it’s such a small world” was such a cliché that it sometimes became irritating. My understanding is that the world is not that small, but the world of the privileged few that we belong to is unfortunately very small. There are only a few who have the opportunity to go to the premier schools and colleges and thus obtain a ticket to come and study or work in the US. That’s all. The world is not small, only the people who live in it are (the pun was unintentional). With that comes my second observation. I noticed that most of the people who I met or worked with who, like me, were first-generation immigrants in the US from India were not too convinced of the “it’s a small world” argument. Well, granted that India is huge in numbers compared to Pakistan. Even then, such low degrees of separation are not common in people who are a subset, lets say people from one city of India. Not only that, I also noticed that these Indian immigrants were often at the receiving end of our witty remarks about their lack of an American or British accent or about their lack of sophistication when it came to wearing the right color of sneakers with jeans. My hypothesis is that that like in the case of Shaadi Online, such remarks are unfair and elitist. I would say hats off to India that it can educate people in its small cities and villages and equip them with the skills needed to work as valuable non-resident Indians all across the globe. As these people with a history of financial struggle, move out to foreign countries, they find and avail opportunities to improve their quality of life. India must be doing something right, if someone who has no foundation in the so-called area of sophistication and class, is offered the social mobility to work hard and come to the various centers of economic action of the world and work productively. Why don’t we see any of our people from the trailing end of the middle class here, working as engineers or doctors?

The answer is simple and clear. Our society lacks the social mobility that healthier societies create for its people. It lacks opportunities for people to improve their condition and in return give back to the society in the form of economic and social uplift of the country at large.

Lessons from Shaadi Online

There are some practical lessons to be learnt from Shaadi Online and I refer to a recent article at Chowk.com titled “Is There Space for Middle Class?” by Abdus Samad. In this article Abdus Samad discusses how our cities lack the nucleus for creating a thriving middle class. I agree with this hypothesis entirely. In the US, I learnt how downtown is the area that people flock to for all kinds of activities. I learnt how downtown is better than the suburbs in terms of life and living and how people pay a premium to be a part of it. This was new to me as back in Pakistan; downtown was associated with qualities like dirty, purely commercial and suffocating. If we take Abdus Samad’s hypothesis to be true, in Shaadi Online we see a way to create those nuclei that are missing in the physical cities of Pakistan. Building thriving downtowns might take decades and millions of rupees but building thriving online communities and intellectual centers might take a lot less. If we can overcome the shortcomings of the people of Pakistan that they suffer because of the intellectual and social lifelessness of our downtowns, by building efficient online communities for all to come and join (like Shaadi Online) with any and all constructive themes, we might be able to speed up the growth of our middle class. Any takers?

After-thought: Besides raising all these thoughts, Shaadi Online, as a community also reminded me of some of the constraints that our society puts on people. For example, while searching the Shaadi Online database, I did not have the option to be indifferent to the religion of the match. There is no option like “Any” in the drop-down list for religion. Imagine the power of online communities, where you can do away with an ages-old prejudice by adding one option to a drop-down list. If we are to build these communities, we need to ensure that all that may be unhealthy in our society is sifted.