[dilawar]

Dowry, the opposite of bride price, is a way to marry your daughter into a higher status family. Ours is an extremely status conscious society. For a bride family, it is like buying status. Dowry in its most obscene form is a richer India thing but poor seems to be copying a quite a lot of it. As a corollary, its mostly high caste, and cities and thing. Cities accounts to most dowry related deaths/murders though I am not very sure if underreporting has something to do with it.

In the last, it was mainly a north Indian thing but has successfully been imported by South as well especially Andhra.