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MARKETING has assumed a wider connotation in the WTO context and is being used not just for the sale of a product but for the promotion of the individual as well. The efforts of people, having different levels of abilities, and wanting to remain in the limelight for long through aggressive self canvassing, now fall under the category of `Personal Marketing'.

The underlying principle of marketing is to stay in the know of people as long as one can. The advent of cable TV and the Internet has added a new dimension to the ad campaigns, especially in the matrimonial field, which at one time were mostly restricted to print media.

The need of the people to find a right spouse in the given space of right caste, sect, sub-sect, star, height, weight, age, qualifications, personal appearance with emphasis on skin colour, habits (the cleaner the better) and specific geographical areas, through the columns of newspapers and cable TV makes one marvel at the rapidity at which the marketing concept has spread.

Matrimonial Web sites catering to the needs of people of different regions have sprung up in no time and are continuously adding new features (read it value addition). The `options' are aplenty widening the scope even for older persons, widowers and widows to make it without any major effort.

The trend has brought in its wake competition among the media players resulting in cost-cutting to the happiness of those seeking their help. A TV channel has earmarked 30 minutes free time for a `spouse-search programme' every week wherein eligible (ineligible not excluded) men and women can appear on the idiot box and exercise their wit and charm to a mate.

It appears that finding a spouse has really become a difficult task even for the foreign-returned and those in the elite IAS and IPS. For the man, it is the woman's beauty, height, educational attainments, employment, family, horoscope and age that matter. For the woman, the man's ability to take care of her for life through thick and thin is uppermost and his attainments are seen only through this prism.

As a corollary to all this, beauty parlours have sprung up all over promising to make the woman her attractive best to catch the eye(s) of the prospective groom.

Though the goals of all the players in the arena are well defined, there is no guarantee that their own stock is worth the goal they are chasing. One thing is clear from all these and it is the man's greed to possess all the best and easily too.

The elderly who are supposed to be reservoirs of knowledge and wisdom are conspicuous by their absence and have little to contribute positive to the situation. How relevant is Edmund Burke's words in his "Reflections on the Revolution of France" that the age of chivalry is gone; it is gone forever with the nobility of honour and the chastity of principle; it is succeeded by the age of sophisters and calculators.

J. Nanda Gopal

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