Breaking down the question
This short-note prompt should be treated as a request to write an analytical note on the challenges facing the institution of marriage in India. The demand is to identify the pressures that are straining or reshaping marriage, not to describe its traditional forms at length.
In India marriage has been understood primarily as a sacrament — an indissoluble, sacred union with religious and social obligations — rather than a mere contract. The challenges arise precisely as this sacramental conception meets forces of individualism, economic change and legal reform. A strong answer surveys these forces and asks whether they amount to a crisis of the institution or its adaptation.
How to approach it
Open by defining marriage in the Indian sense as a sacrament and social institution, so that the challenges can be measured against it. Then group the challenges into economic, cultural, legal and demographic strands. Distinguish clearly between challenges that dissolve the institution and challenges that transform it, and close with a judgement that marriage is being redefined rather than abandoned. For the descriptive foundation, see the note on family and marriage in India.
Model answer
In the Indian tradition marriage is a sacrament — a sacred, lifelong union that binds not only two individuals but two families and discharges religious duty. The contemporary institution faces a series of challenges that test this conception.
The first is the rise of individualism. Higher education, urban employment and exposure to new values have made personal choice, compatibility and emotional fulfilment central expectations. Anthony Giddens's idea of the pure relationship — a bond sustained only so long as it satisfies both partners — captures the shift from marriage as obligation to marriage as negotiated companionship. This raises expectations and lowers tolerance of an unsatisfying union.
Second, the economic independence of women. As women enter paid work, the older breadwinner–homemaker division is destabilised. New negotiations over domestic labour, careers and authority strain marriages built on unequal roles, even as they make more equal partnerships possible.
Third, rising divorce and separation. Though still low by global standards, divorce has grown, especially in cities, and legal reform — provisions for divorce, maintenance and protection against cruelty — has made exit thinkable where the sacramental model once made it unthinkable.
Fourth, the emergence of alternatives and delay. Live-in relationships, later marriage, singlehood by choice and, in public debate, the question of same-sex unions all present arrangements the sacramental model did not anticipate. Migration and nuclear living further loosen the kin supervision that once held marriages together.
Fifth, persistent internal strains — dowry, domestic violence and the tension between arranged and self-choice marriage — challenge the institution from within, generating both legal intervention and social questioning.
Sociologists differ on how to read these trends. A. M. Shah argued that the Indian family and marriage have shown remarkable resilience, adapting rather than collapsing. M. N. Srinivas noted how modern forces work through traditional structures. The evidence suggests transformation more than disintegration: arranged marriage persists in modified, consent-based forms; most Indians still marry; but the meaning of marriage is moving from an indissoluble sacrament toward a more companionate, negotiated and, in principle, dissoluble bond. The institution is being redefined rather than dismantled.
Examiner's perspective
Examiners reward candidates who frame the answer against the sacramental conception of Indian marriage, so that each challenge registers as a departure from a clear baseline. The strongest scripts organise the pressures thematically — individualism, women's economic independence, divorce, alternatives — and use Giddens's pure relationship alongside A. M. Shah's resilience thesis to hold interpretation in tension. A common weakness is to slide into moralising about the decline of family values; the discriminating answer distinguishes dissolution from adaptation and concludes that marriage is being transformed, not abolished.