A satirical website created in 2011 calculates the amount of dowry women need to marry men of their choice. The site mocks India's social ills and exposes some of the unhealthy factors that families consider to arrive at the 'dowry rate'. Some factors are caste, groom's education and even skin color. In India the custom of dowry is a very ancient tradition which originated in the 13th or 14th century, when women were not given any share of their father's wealth and when women were considered the property of their fathers or husbands. At that time, dowry guaranteed women a pre-mortem inheritance and some economic security. Traditionally it was a Stridhanam - the marriage of the daughter, but in the 20th and 21st centuries a wife no longer has any control over the dowry and it is only the monetary price that a woman's parents pay to her future son-in-law for getting married. from their daughter. There have been many regulations by the Indian government to ban this tradition, but people tend not to respond to these regulations. Not only government officials but also political and social activists have expressed their contrary views. Arundhati Roy, author of The God of Small Things, is a political and social activist who criticizes Indian society and argues that women deserve equal rights with men in terms of inheritance and property. The God of Small Things has two interesting passages that talk about the qualities (or lack thereof) of the two protagonists Ammu and Rahel, mother and daughter respectively. The first passage describes Ammu's early life and her decision to marry Baba. While the second passage concerns Rahel, Ammu's daughter. This passage describes how Rahel, having no one... half the paper, decided to convert Baby Kochamma into a nun and give her some education. Works Cited Banerjee, Priya R. “Dowry in 21st-Century India : The Sociocultural Face of Exploitation.” Trauma, violence and abuse 15.1 (2013): 34-40. Wise diaries. Network. March 20, 2014.Munshi, Soumyanetra. “Education and Giftedness: An Economic Exploration.” IIM Kozhikode Society & Management Review 1.2 (2012): 111-20. Wise diaries. Network. 03 March 2014Rastogi, Mudita and Paul Therly. “Dowry and its Link to Violence Against Women in India: Feminist Psychological Perspectives.” Trauma, violence and abuse 7.1 (2006): 66-77. Wise diaries. Network. March 15, 2014.Roy, Amitabh. "Women in the novel." The god of small things: a novel of social commitment. New Delhi: Atlantic, 2005. 47-66. Print.Roy, Arundhati. The God of small things. New York: Random House, 1997.