By Pashchiema Bhatia

Love marriage vs. Arranged marriage has always been a debatable issue. One obvious reason for this is the generation gap. Most of the people of older generation advocate arranged marriages because they believe that their children are not mature enough to decide on such crucial matters. Indian society is still largely identified for arranged marriages and on top of that for same-caste alliances. 95 % of marriages still happen within the caste.

In the modern times and with the widespread usage of technology and social media, conventions and traditions are being challenged. Love marriages are gaining more acceptance.

Love Couple Image: Wikimedia Commons

For people of new generation, love marriage is more comfortable because they would already know each other and after spending months and years together, they would come up with the decision to get married.In our traditional society, love marriages however come with an anxiety for the parents and families. Societal bonds are such that families want to know about the background and reputation of the would be family member. Probably that has led to emergence of the concept of 'Love Detective". Rajni pandit is one such example.

Related Article: Mizoram has the highest percentage of inter-caste marriages

Social media is a platform where people of different castes and opposite gender interact and that's the reason why it becomes a matter of concern for parents when their children become more active on social media and then the parents are left with only one option and that is to approach love detectives like Rajani Pandit.

Rajani Pandit is a lady love detective who goes undercover to help parents in ensuring their children's future by probing into their personal lives and finding the truths about their love stories. There are several detectives who investigate on post-marital affairs but Rajani is the first lady who investigates youth relationships. This concern of parents may result in many more professional love detectives coming up.

Parents approach her and ask her to follow their children and find out the information about their companions. This lady love detective has solved a total of 7,500 cases in India.

Watch This Video to know how Rajani works and why parents approach her:

Before watching this video, I could debate for hours on this matter to advocate love marriages because if I have to consider those cases of honor killings where innocent children are killed by their own parents just because their love story is not acceptable for the society then I do not find the concern of those parents tolerable. But in this video, there is an old lady who fears that her daughter is dating someone who is already married and finally approaches love detective to seek help. Rajani follows him and finds that he is not only married but also he has two children. But the same thing can happen after arrange marriage also. Some people, after getting married, do cheat their partners. It can happen after any sort of marriage so blaming only love marriages won't be reasonable.

From this video I got to know that both sort of marriages have their cons and pros and successful marriage is all about fate, trustworthiness and the maturity of the two people to persist understanding and love.

Here is a very satisfactory quote of Dr. Epstein which helped me to conclude:

"The idea is we must not leave our love lives to chance. We plan our education, our careers and our finances but we're still uncomfortable with the idea that we should plan our love lives. I do not advocate arranged marriages but I think a lot can be learned from them."

Pashchiema is an intern at NewsGram and a student of journalism and mass communication in New Delhi. Twitter: @pashchiema