Why there's no prom in Indian schools?

First of all , let's see what's prom is . 

A prom is a ball or formal dance at a school or college, especially one held at the end of the academic year for students who are in their final year, the sophomores. And it has students bringing dates along with them.

Boys and girls in school are supposed to ask each other out to be there prom partners.

(Do you think any Indian parent will allow two people of opposite gender to be this close to each other?)

This is what happened when this seemingly inappropriate posters of a telugu film called arjun reddy released 

Look at how the so called cultural saviors are vandalizing  the public property just because that poster is a threat to their glorious culture (sarcasm).

Now, as to why there is no prom concept in India?

The reason is-:

1. Most of the people in India are very conservative and talking and hanging out with opposite sex is generally looked down upon by the society it is said to cause distractions in studies.         
2. In India, 10th and 12th are said to be the career defining years of the students lives. People decide which stream/discipline a student will pursue after class 10th and then prepare for the said discipline in class 11th and 12th. A fun night of mingling and fraternizing will be a a huge waste of time for the said student, a time which he/she can utilize studying for the upcoming tests and whatnot.                                                  
3. Parents in India, as said in first point, believe that building romantic relationships with a person will destroy their kids’ career (which is just dumb !) A girl/boy will distract their child from his/her studies. Now this may somewhat be true but this just shows that parents are not trusting of their kids and are coming in the way of their general development. The child has little to no say in the decisions, that the parents make, for his/her future.                
4. Western influence. Indian Conservative Parents (ICP’s) these days are against the western influence because apparently, westerners are “not cultured” . What the ICP’s don’t realize is the western parents don’t coddle their children. They let them make their own choices and learn from them instead of completely commanding them to do something.

To put it bluntly , the stupidity, immaturity, rigidity and regressive nature of the conservative Indian parents (as well as the teachers and the society as a whole) stand as a hurdle in the way to introducing the prom culture in India. But there's something pivotal which we are missing here…

Let the society's regressive attitude against intimacy of opposite sex teenagers alone for a second. We are far from that. Still miles away from even considering fighting that.

In a country where the sick culture of boys-only and girls-only schools is still normalised you can hardly imagine the society to be ready to let the opposite sexes to naturally mingle and learn.

The society still doesn't realize how important natural engagement between all genders through the tender school years is crucial for the smooth development of a person's personality. Why do you think most Indian boys (sometimes girls) complain about not knowing how to approach girls (boys), and fear coming off as desperate? We have seen enough screenshots on how middle-aged (at times even younger) Indian men behave on social networking sites while texting random women.

Most “co-ed” schools have a huge gap between the strengths of students of the two sexes. I was privileged enough to study in few such convents but even my schools, which were one of the best and most inclusive schools in Tamil Nadu , SBOA  for one, usually had around a 45 : 25 boys to girls ratio in a class. Pointing at how parents prefer their daughters to go to all-girls schools.

Apart from generic single sex schools, even a lot of elite convents in the metropolitan cities in India which were established by the British and a lot of other age-old legacy-schools with repute and fame are still unisex, as they were half a century back, and they don't seem too keen on fixing that even today to be more inclusive, scientific and practical. Merely in the name of holding fast to their age-old legacy. There are exceptions of course, my school went co-ed from an all boys in the 90’s.

Unless the unisex schools cease to exist in the country, you can't really fathom proms taking place in Indian institutions, since unless the disproportionately skewed sex distributions in the co-ed schools are refitted, a lot of lads will not be able to earn themselves a prom-date and that will not only leave them bitter against the ones that got one but also push their already negligible self-esteem and sense of self-worth, which the school, society and parents never even bothered working on, to the dungeons. This would do more harm than good.

So, one step at a time. Let's ban the unisex schools first and turn them all co-ed. And make it mandatory for every co-ed school to have an almost equal number of boys and girls. This isn't the 1800s.

Let's hope that the things will change for good. Orelse the forthcoming generations will have to go through a separate class for interacting with the opposite sex. 

An occasional writer.