Biodata (pronounced by-oh-dar-tah)
(1) A type of resume or curriculum vitae,
regarding an individual's education and work history, especially in the context
of a selection process.
(2) An semi-standardized document created
to list the salient features of those in the Hindu marriage market.
1950s: A compound word, the construct being bio(graphical) + data. Bio is from the Ancient Greek βίο (bío), combining form and stem of βίος (bios) (life). Data is borrowed from the Latin data, nominative plural of datum (that is given), neuter past participle of dō (I give) and the doublet of date. In English use, data is frequently used as both a singular & plural, datum now restricted almost entirely to technical writing by those for whom the distinction (or who fear being shamed by fastidious colleagues) matters although pedants do delight is pointing out what they insist remains an error. This looseness isn't anything new; by the 1640s data meant "a fact given or granted" an organic evolution from the original use in Latin when it conveyed the sense of "a fact given as the basis for calculation in mathematical problems" and the connection with numbers has in the twentieth century become stronger. In the early 1900s the predominant meaning was "numerical facts collected for future reference" and the meaning "transmittable and storable information by which computer operations are performed" seems first to have been documented in 1946. Probably few words have been so associated as data & computers: Data-processing is from 1954 (although for years the industry seemed unable to decide if it was electronic data processing (EDP) or just data processing (DP) and the database (also as data-base) (a "structured collection of data stored in a manner it can be retrieved, analysed & and manipulated using a computer" was first described in 1958. The data-entry operator (a person who transcribes data from physical sources (usually paper) into a computer, usually via keyboard entry) was distinct segment of the labor market by 1969 but was effectively extinct within less than two generations, a victim of technological advances. Biodata is a noun; there is no accepted word biodatum and the plural of biodata is biodatas.
From HR to the marriage market
Biodata began life as part of the jargon of US industrial and organizational psychology. To the HR professionals, it was a way of standardising the biographical data submitted in CVs but, being standardised, the information was inherently structured and thus suitable for storage and analysis, something which became increasingly interesting as big-machine databases became ubiquitous in corporations. As early as the 1960s, corporate HR operations began applying the analytical techniques of psychology and criminology to their structured biodata sets, the predictive ability of the methods based on the axiom that past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior. While crunching biodata does not predict all future behaviors, it does produce an indicative number, a measure of that to which future behaviors should tend. Although claimed to be value-free, based as it is on the factual, not introspection and subjective judgements, biodata analysis has attracted criticism because of the bias inherent in the data chosen.
Extract from Lindsay Lohan's biodata.
In the twenty-first century, as the internet reached critical-mass in South Asian countries where the arranged marriage remains culturally embedded, biodata quickly became the preferred term to describe the résumé parents submit to other parents to permit unsuitable boys and girls to be culled from the list of prospective suitors. Now often done through marriage sites (a specialised type of social media), the biodata typically includes such information as caste, education, work history, financial status, family background, height, weight, skin-tone and a photo. However, although many sites offer structured templates, there's much variation although it's not clear whether there's any tendency towards a consistency of layout or content based on caste, geographical origin or anything else. One thing that hasn't changed is that biodata documents are still formatted in a way inherently suited to the printed A4 page, though to reflect the cultural preference of parents. Despite the mobile device use being high even among the older demographic in South Asia, when culling potential suitors, the big space of the A4 page seems still preferable to the small screen.
A cultural phenomenon which would be understood by structural functionalists is that despite the caste discrimination being outlawed in India for over seventy years, caste status and preferences remain frequently included in the biodata on Indian marriage sites. Caste discrimination and untouchability were officially abolished in India with the adoption of the Constitution of India Act (26 January 1950), article 15 prohibiting discrimination on the basis of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth. Building on this, the (Congress) government of India passed the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) (1989), which provided additional protections for Dalits (formerly known as untouchables) and other marginalized groups. Despite this seventy-odd year tradition of structural equality, caste discrimination persists in India (as it does to some degree in probably every culture) and remains a significant element in biodata .
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