RELATIONSHIP MODE: OFF

In 2016, the hotel room aggregator OYO Rooms announced that it would offer a couple-friendly mode on its website, enabling unmarried duos to make bookings without worrying about whether they would be turned away at reception, as has long been a sociocultural norm.

- SHARANYA MANIVANNAN

The mode would only show hotels that did not have antiquated policies requiring valid documents as marital proof. Now, the company has begun to reverse its progressive stand.

Beginning with the city of Meerut, OYO will now require marital proof at check-in. It is expected that these policy changes will be implemented in more places soon. There is no law that requires such documentation or permits such discrimination. This is just like demanding no-objection letters from the male relatives of women travelers or vigilante groups and building associations killing or throwing out meat-eating residents—just another exercise in citizen-led tyranny in India.