Thirty-eight-year-old Arpita Roy Karmakar lives in Mumbai alone and is single. She has no other extended family to fall back on. Though she enjoyed her independence in her 20s and 30s, busy making her career and spending time with friends, it is only now she feels the burden on her shoulder to manage finances on her own.
“Of late, I am feeling the pressure of having to manage everything all by myself. At times, I feel helpless and tired. I wish there was somebody to help me. I also sometimes worry about whether I would have enough money to take care of myself all my life,” rues Karmakar with a wry smile.
Moreover, she adds that the lack of financial awareness in her 20s made her life tougher now. “Now I realize how important financial literacy and awareness are. In my 20s, there was no one to guide me in financial planning. Hence, now I find it challenging to apply for a bank loan to buy a house or plan for other such significant milestones for life for which we need a big corpus,” she says.
And she is not alone. Today, many women are living independently in India, like in the US. According to the latest report of the National Statistical Office (NSO), the proportion of unmarried females rose from 13.5 per cent in 2011 to 19.9 per cent in 2019.
The NSO survey also found that the marriage age has increased over the years. There has been a significant reduction in women’s age at first marriage in the 25-29-year age cohort, as only 52.8 per cent…
