The corporate matchmaker

Be it a love marriage or an arranged one, there is a universal belief that matrimonial matches are made in Heaven. However, there are people who claim that they can help parents find suitable partners for their children. These are the operators of marriage bureaus, who feel that they are serving humanity through matchmaking.
In Pakistan, where finding suitable partners has become notoriously difficult for several reasons, marriage bureaus perform a significant role. According to a survey there are over 60 marriage bureaus in the twin cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi alone, besides other matchmakers who work in a non-corporate fashion.
“Perhaps this is the only service sector where people trust women. We do have male clients but in majority of the cases we come across female clients,” said Ruktaz Bibi, the owner of a marriage bureau in Islamabad. She had a massive catalogue that contained the profiles of a number of candidates, ranging from 15 to 60 years of age.
She said it was extremely difficult to find a proper match for young girls in Pakistan. “Eighty-five per cent of my existing clients are parents of young girls desperately looking for a proper match,” she said. Asked about the operators of fake bureaus who just extorted money from innocent match-seekers, she acknowledged there were people who had turned this service into a business.
Hasan Khan, 35, said that he had been looking for a suitable match for the last two years through marriage facilitators. He said that there were many facilitators who just took the initial token money of up to Rs 1,000 in the name of registration and never bothered to look for the required match Another candidate present at the office of Ruktaz Bibi, Arshad Mehmood, told Pakistan Today that he came there looking for a suitable match for himself. To a query, he said his various friends had been successful in securing proposals through marriage bureaus, adding that their marriages were going well.
However, he had no doubt that there were some marriage bureaus and marriage facilitators who were cheating people: taking money yet never looking for a suitable match. But the number of such marriage bureaus and facilitators was limited, he added.
While many fake bureaus exist, there are many engaged in this activity in the name of charity. “I have facilitated over a thousand marriages. There is scope in this service; working women should join it as a part time activity,” said Nazia, who also runs a non-governmental organisation for women welfare. “Women can make money by using their connections. It is a kar-e-khair (divine service).” She also lauded the new trend of mass marriages being arranged by the government.
She said western societies tend to deride arranged marriages as backward and primitive, yet they do have some positive aspects. “According to our statistics, the success ratio of arranged marriages is higher compared to love marriages,” said Nazia, who has been engaged with the service for the last 20 years.
She said that facilitating was a service to humanity, a religious obligation and a source of desirable income. However, she said the absence of a regulatory authority to promote or control the purveyors of this service was bringing a bad name to the profession.