What the data tells us about love and marriage in India

What do Indians think of love and marriage? Journalist Rukmini S draws on data to piece together a picture of the socio-political realities that underpin marriage and companionship in the country. When 22-year-old Nitin Kamble gets on an overnight bus twice a month from Mumbai, where he works, to a village in Maharashtra state where his family lives, he imagines himself packing two bags: one to take on the trip, and the other filled with all the parts of himself he cannot take along, stowed under the bed in his shared one-room tenement.

Along with the fact that he eats meat now and drinks an occasional beer, the bag that he imagines leaving behind in Mumbai holds his deepest secret - that his girlfriend is of another caste, something he knows that his parents - and most certainly hers - will never accept.

As familiar as his story might sound, Nitin would appear to be an outlier if you look at data.

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