FORTUNES OF INDIA: Weddings have become showcases for the new wealth of India's growing middle classes, but beneath the glitzy surface many traditional practices remain, writes MARY FITZGERALDin New Delhi
WHEN IT comes to her forthcoming nuptials, Ritika has a firm idea of what she wants. “My wedding will be simple and elegant,” she says. Her mother Kumkum nods in agreement. “I recently attended a wedding which was way over the top,” she recalls. “People are throwing their money away on weddings.”
With her dreams of a low-key celebration, Ritika, a 25-year-old IT consultant from the historic city of Jaipur in northern India, is something of a rarity in a country where there are few better barometers of changing values and aspirations than what is often referred to as the Big Fat Indian Wedding. That said, Ritika’s idea of a simple event still involves up to 700 guests.
Mother and daughter are browsing at Bridal Asia, a three-day event which bills itself as India’s largest wedding fair. With the country’s burgeoning middle class – now estimated at up to 300 million – turning weddings into showcases of their swelling disposable income, the business of getting married has spawned an industry worth the equivalent of tens of billions of euro annually. Wedding malls, selling everything a bride needs under one roof, have opened in several cities. Banks advertise special wedding loans. India’s wedding season, which begins in October, is slavishly tracked by dozens of magazines including domestic editions of Vogue and Hello! Two decades of economic liberalisation have created a new monied class all too eager to shrug off the austerity that marked India’s post-independence period, with its mix of Nehruvian socialism and Gandhian idealism. And nowhere is this more evident than when the sons and daughters of boom India get married. “Weddings were always sources of extravagance and indebtedness but this was within limits imposed by community pressure and the need to not be too much out of line with your neighbours or caste-fellows,” says sociologist Patricia Uberoi. “Nowadays it’s a case of whatever you can afford and more – plus there’s a market to enable you to do all that.”
Jamila and Seema Malhotra, designers from Bangalore whose work has appeared in films such as Elizabeth and Shakespeare in Love, have watched Indian weddings grow ever showier in tandem with the country’s rapid economic growth. Increasingly demanding brides request increasingly lavish wedding trousseaux, often with real pearls and semi-precious stones sewn into the fabric. The Malhotras are regularly asked to work with couples who have opted for “destination weddings” overseas. “People have more money and they want to show off their wealth,” says Seema. “The glamour of Bollywood has also been a huge influence.”
Jewellery designer Falguni Mehta agrees. “It’s all about making a statement now,” she says. “Everybody wants their wedding to be much bigger and better than anyone else’s.”
The exhibitors at Bridal Asia, held at an upmarket Delhi hotel, reflect the increasingly internationalised tastes of many upwardly mobile Indians. Wedding menus include Japanese, Thai and Italian cuisine. A confectionery company offers florentines, truffles and cupcakes in lieu of traditional sweetmeats.
Wedding planners – another recent phenomenon – say the minimum budget they work with is around €25,000, while the more affluent are known to spend up to €1.5 million. Costs like this help explain the wisecrack that India’s divorce rate remains one of the lowest in the world because neither the bride’s nor groom’s family are willing to subject themselves to near-bankruptcy ever again.
Jokes aside, many are uneasy with the profligacy that has come to characterise Indian weddings. The chief minister of Kerala, a southern state that boasts India’s highest education levels, recently launched a campaign against ostentatious nuptials.
He argued that social pressures to have ever bigger and more expensive celebrations were leaving more people in debt, as well as contributing to suicide and domestic violence rates. Sociologists have linked the rise in female foeticide – estimated to run to some five million cases annually – and the continuing, yet illegal, practice of dowry to such pressures. In 2007, the leaders of Delhi’s Sikh community raised similar concerns when they issued wedding guidelines in order to curb some of the worst excesses.
“Our fight is against the exploitation by those who pose demands on the girl’s family to organise elaborate weddings,” said Paramjit Singh Sarna, president of the city’s main Sikh body. “It is this splurge of wealth on ceremonies which is promoting dowry and practices like female foeticide.” But scratch the glitzy surface of weddings in boom India and you will find traditions like arranged marriage still hold sway at all levels of society.
“Arranged marriages still dominate and I don’t think that is going to die out anytime soon,” says Shipra, a 20-something Delhi woman, as she examines gold necklaces featuring bejewelled representations of Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess of wealth, and Ganesha, the elephant-headed god of success, at Bridal Asia. “Arranged marriages work, and, anyway, people prefer to stay with their own kind.”
Retisha, who works in marketing, bucked tradition when she had what is often referred to as a “love marriage”. “My parents were not happy at the beginning but they eventually came round,” she says. “Many of my friends also married for love, but it is still quite unusual.”
Somewhere in between arranged and love marriages are the unions made through a growing number of matchmaking websites. Detailed matrimonial ads, most of which specify caste, have long been carried in India’s newspapers. But companies like Bharat Matrimony, which offers online services as well as walk-in centres where counsellors help find a prospective spouse, have become hugely popular, especially among young professionals. As is so often the case in the new India, technology helps one of the world’s youngest populations negotiate a path between tradition and modernity.
This series, which has now concluded, was supported with a grant from Irish Aid’s Simon Cumbers Media Fund.