Kerala files roughly 75 divorce petitions every day. This statistic is usually presented as evidence of social change, declining family values, rising individualism, economic independence, or the collapse of civilisation, depending on the speaker’s ideological preferences. All these explanations may contain elements of truth.
Yet they miss a more immediate and practical question. Why is ending a marriage still harder than cancelling a broadband connection?
Not easier, admittedly. Broadband companies have their own views on human freedom. But at least they eventually stop calling. Which is more than can be said for many institutions that continue to regard human relationships as a form of public infrastructure.
This is particularly surprising in an age when almost everything else has become frictionless. We can transfer money across the country in seconds, verify identities instantly, order groceries, pay taxes and book train tickets with minimal effort.
Yet when two adults reach the perfectly ordinary conclusion that they no longer wish to remain married, society suddenly rediscovers its attachment to manual processing.
Forms appear. Affidavits emerge. A cooling-off period materialises. The state, which trusts us to operate motor vehicles and vote in elections, becomes deeply concerned that we may be acting impulsively.
It is therefore time for a technological intervention. MatriDB 2.0 is a startup idea aimed at solving one of the last major inefficiencies in the Indian economy: the inability of two adults to conclude a relationship with the same efficiency with which they can book a train ticket.
The architecture is simple. Two consenting adults create a partnership record. A timestamp is generated. A tasteful marigold animation appears on screen. The record is now active.
The beauty of the system, however, lies not in its entry process but in its exit process.
Under the current arrangement, the end of a marriage resembles a prolonged correspondence with an insurance company. Everyone involved agrees that something has happened. The only remaining question is how many documents will be required before this reality is officially acknowledged.
MatriDB eliminates this inefficiency.
When one or both parties conclude that the partnership has run its course, they simply navigate to Partnership Settings and select Archive. The system responds: “are you 100% sure?”
This is an important question. A well-designed confirmation screen could have avoided many regrettable decisions in human history.
Upon confirmation, the record is archived. Duration: 4 years, 7 months, 11 days. Status: concluded with dignity. Both users return to active circulation. Critics will object that such ease of exit undermines commitment. This concern deserves respectful consideration.
For such users, MatriDB will include a Traditional Values Mode. In this setting, dissatisfied couples may continue inhabiting the same legal arrangement indefinitely while periodically informing one another that things were better in the past. The system will not interfere.
A partnership preserved by affection is generally preferable to one preserved by paperwork. A lock that cannot be opened from inside is not a home. It is a custody arrangement with decorative cushions.
Children, naturally, require special consideration. Financial obligations remain enforceable. Parenting responsibilities remain mandatory. The system is designed to archive marriages, not parents.
There is also a deeper philosophical justification for MatriDB, though the Ministry of Happiness Promotion and Positive Outlook Index has advised against discussing it in public documents due to concerns that citizens may begin asking difficult questions.
The difficulty, perhaps, is that once one starts thinking seriously about the design of relationships, one inevitably ends up thinking about the design of life itself. And life, unlike most government schemes, comes with fairly clear terms and conditions.
Everything ends. Empires end. Corporations end. Political careers end. Streaming subscriptions end. Even the noble banana purchased with optimistic intentions on a Sunday morning eventually reaches a stage where nobody wishes to acknowledge ownership. Nature appears remarkably comfortable with this arrangement.
Human institutions are the exception. We seem to believe that once a relationship has been entered into, its conclusion must be accompanied by a sufficient quantity of paperwork, guilt and procedural inconvenience.
Yet life itself is temporary accommodation. We arrive without consultation, remain for a brief and unpredictable period, form attachments, collect experiences, make mistakes, revise opinions, discover unexpected joys and eventually move on.
In such circumstances, it seems unnecessarily ambitious to insist that every emotional decision made at twenty-seven must remain administratively active at seventy-three.
MatriDB merely acknowledges what nature has known all along: endings are not system failures. They are part of the system.
Indeed, one might argue that the purpose of life is not to remain permanently attached to the first available record, but to explore, learn, recalibrate and gradually discover what brings genuine contentment.
Some people discover contentment early. Others require a longer search. The universe has never displayed much anxiety about either category. MatriDB takes no position on these matters. It simply ensures that the search function remains available. The deeper question raised by Kerala’s growing divorce numbers is not whether people are leaving.
People have always left. The question is why societies insist on making departures unnecessarily exhausting, adversarial and prolonged. Perhaps the purpose of institutions should not be to prevent endings. Perhaps it should be to ensure that endings, when they arrive, occur with fairness, dignity and a minimum amount of emotional queue management.
MatriDB cannot guarantee happiness. No software can. But it can guarantee that if two adults decide their story has reached its final chapter, they will not spend the next three years arguing with lawyers, forms and the administrative afterlife of a decision already made.
The marigold animation is ready. The database is waiting. The rest, as always, is between you and your user account.
(This proposal has not been approved by Parliament, the Law Commission, or anyone currently trapped in a family court waiting room. Feedback may be submitted through the grievance portal. The grievance portal is temporarily unavailable due to scheduled maintenance.)
The writer is the Regional Provident Fund Commissioner, Kochi & Lakshadweep, with public service experience across India and Afghanistan. His work centres on social security, digital governance and policy reform.
