Congress leader Jyotiraditya Scindia on Monday tweeted to the Prime Minister’s office and Ministry of Women and Child Development reporting a Dowry Calculator web portal urging them to take immediate action against the website.
Scindia, the Member of Parliament from Guna in Madhya Pradesh, said in a tweet, “Someone just brought this site to my attention. Absolutely shameful! Let me remind the developers that giving or taking dowry is illegal in India. I urge the @MinistryWCD, @PMOIndia to take immediate action against this.”
Taking cognisance, Union Women and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi on Tuesday asked Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad to block the website. "I request you to have this site blocked immediately and initiate action against the owners/developers of the website and the agency which is hosting this website," she said in a letter, according to PTI.
The website which is at least seven-year-old, according to the Wayback Machine, takes into account the details like groom’s age, caste, profession, salary, the university he attended, his skin colour and height to calculate the expected dowry amount.
However, the most irksome among the details one has to fill in is the options provided when you click on the drop-down menu for ‘Groom’s Skin Color’. The options include ‘Pitch Black (Not visible on a Moonless night)’ and ‘Wheatish (Almost white. Would need some fair n Lovely)’.
Tanul Thakur, a film critic who holds the rights for the website, however, said it was a satire. Tweeting from his account, Thakur posted a screengrab of Scindia’s tweet with a caption, “Calm down, it's a satire. (But thanks for directing traffic to the website.)”
According to the website, an average height 26-year-old Brahmin Chartered Accountant with salary between 40K and 50K will be entitled to a dowry of Rs 50 lakh.