The document discusses how social institutions constrain individual choices in choosing a life partner through a case study. Through interviews with respondents in India, it found that caste and religion greatly limit freedom of choice, especially for inter-caste and inter-faith marriages. Societal expectations and legal restrictions, such as laws requiring permission for interfaith unions, impose constraints. While individuals value freedom of choice, their families have mixed views about relationships that defy social norms. The study aims to show how structural factors restrict people from achieving important capabilities like choosing one's partner.

1. How are Individual Choices constrained
by Social Institutions When it Comes to
Choosing a Life Partner: A Case Study
By- Sandeep Yadav

2. Motivation
• In a survey which was conducted in 2018, among 160000 households,
93% married individuals said that their marriage was arranged (BBC
News).
• This report stated social acceptability as a major cause for less
number of people ‘being able’ to choose their life partners by
themselves.
• Sen’s notions of Capabilities and Functionings which include finding a
partner, getting a job or getting education.
• Sen’s definition of well-being is the freedom of choice to achieve the
things in life which one has reason to value most for his or her
personal life.
• Being able to choose your life partner is an important aspect of well-
being.

3. Objective
• To emphasise on the fact that societal and legal factors restrict
people from achieving their fuctionings especially when it is about
choosing their life partners by themselves.

4. Introduction
• According to Sen- Capabilities are real freedom people have or the
opportunities and choices available to them. ‘Freedom of choice’ is
central to capabilities approach.
• People should have the opportunities to achieve those functionings
which they have reason to value most for their personal life.
• Choices people make during their life are dependent on their
‘capabilities’ which ultimately impact their ‘well-being outcomes’.
• The societal, legal, economic factors etc. impose constraints on the
choices and hence on the well-being outcomes of the individual.
• How these constraints are responsible to hold people back on their
preferred choices.

5. Methodology
• Qualitative Analysis based on Telephonic interview
• Type of interaction- informal (broadly based on questionnaire)
• Four Respondents – Age Group (25-30).
• The responses about respondent’s family has been used as a representative
of societal mind-set.
Serial No. Place Gender Rural/Urban Caste(Category)
Res 1 Durgapur, West Bengal Female Urban General
Res 2 Kalahandi, Odisha Female Rural SC
Res 3 Pratapgarh, UP Male Rural SC
Res 4 Jaunpur, UP Male Rural OBC

6. General Outcomes
• Except for respondent from West Bengal, love marriages are quite
uncommon in the society they live in. The interaction among the
opposite genders is quite less. After a certain age, gender based
segregation is practiced.
• For respondent from West Bengal, caste is not that much of a
restriction, as it is, for the respondents from . Love marriages are not
that uncommon. The level of education of partner matters most.
Reason can be she is a part of urban society.
• In general, each respondent agreed on it that, if the person is
influential, the society tends to accept the love marriages more easily
than otherwise.

7. Outcomes (Contd.)
• Further, for the structural convenience the responses are into 2
categories-
• Caste-
Except respondent from West Bengal, respondents agreed that caste
system puts major hindrance in their freedom of choice. As people in
their community tend to marry someone in their own caste.
For female respondents, marrying a person from a lower caste in the
caste hierarchy is more difficult than their male counterparts.
Inter-caste marriages are very uncommon for the rural societies than
urban societies. There is less acceptability in the society for such
marriages.

8. Outcomes (Contd.)
• Religion-
For all respondents, inter-faith marriages are very rare and
unacceptable to their family and society.
In UP, for inter-faith marriages the administrative permission is
necessary (Love Jihad Law). This puts a legal constrain on liberty of
choices of citizen.
 For all the Respondents individual freedom is of utmost importance
but their family and society has mixed feeling about this law.
Basically there are some apprehensions about forceful faith
conversions in inter-faith marriages in the families of all the
respondents.

9. Conclusion
• People should have the freedoms or valuable opportunities
(capabilities) to lead the kind of lives they want to lead.
• They should have the freedom to do what they want to do and be the
person they want to be.
• Once they effectively have these substantive opportunities, from
these opportunities, they can choose those options that they value
most.
• Personal, societal and legal institutions affect the conversion factor
and capability sets directly.
• Every person should at least have the opportunity to choose his or
her life partner whether or not they go for it.

10. References
• Sen, A (1985) Commodities and Capabilities
• Robeyns, I (2005) The Capability Approach: A Theoretical
Survey,Journal of Human Development.
• Muffels, R., & Headey, B. (2013). Capabilities and choices: Do
they make Sense for understanding objective and subjective
well-being? An empirical test of Sen’s capability framework on
German and British panel data. Social indicators
research, 110(3)
• Robeyns, I. (2003, September). The capability approach: an
interdisciplinary introduction. In Training course preceding the
Third International Conference on the Capability Approach,
Pavia, Italy

11. Thank You!