Church mandates pre-marriage counseling as divorces skyrocket

Thiruvananthapuram, January 23:

"To hell with marriage. It has ruined my life and screwed up my career,” says Robin Joseph, 27. Joseph, a software engineer, belongs to new generation in the southern Indian state of Kerala where crumbling marriages are becoming part of life.

Joseph married a colleague in 2010 and filed a divorce petition after six months. The global IT company in Bangalore where he was working asked him to leave after his personal problems surfaced at the workplace.

Now he is working in an Indian IT company for less pay. “I’m paying for my mistake of choosing the wrong partner,” he says.

Joseph is part of a growing trend. Divorces in Kerala have increased by an astonishing 400 percent in a decade.

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