The wedding celebrations of Guptas' two sons took place in Auli between 18 to 22 June. Almost all the hotels and resorts were booked. Flowers were imported from Switzerland for the high-profile marriages.
Several chief ministers, Bollywood actors like Katrina Kaif, yoga guru Baba Ramdev attended the wedding. Ramdev also conducted a two-hour yoga session at the wedding. Choppers were hired to ferry the guests.
In the aftermath, now Auli municipal corporation in Uttarakhand's is facing the challenging task of cleaning up the waste left by the wedding celebrations.
Its not only rich men, Indian politicians have never shied away from such extravaganza.In 2011 Congress minister Kanwar Singh spent over 250 crore on his son wedding and the minister’s son received a Bell 429 helicopter as a wedding gift from his in-laws, who happen to be Haryana ex-MLA. The wedding was attended by 15000 guests.The groom’s tika was done with 2.5 crore while the families’ tika with 1 crore.
And most of us remember Karnataka BJP leader and ex-minister Gali Janardhan Reddy of the BJP throwing a mind-boggling Rs 500-crore wedding for his daughter at the time of demonetization. While stood in long queues at the banks for cash, king Reddy threw away currency notes on lavish sets and jewelery.
Tragically, weddings in India are seen as "show off" of your status and fulifilment of an important social duty.Even on contemporary modern India, ask any middle-class family about their dreams? They will instantaneously say: “to build a house” and “children’s marriage”. There is a strong belief that if you fulfill this social duty, you will get Nirvana.
No matter, a person will have to float a loan and bear the brunt of "Sahukaar" (lenders) high interest rest of his life. And the high profile weddings serve as social reminder to Indian hapless middle-class father. If not hypocrisy, it is the peer societal pressure which makes many of us to indulge in 'out of pocket' show off weddings. In this ultrasonic internet age, a law is needed to curb this wedding "hypocrisy".
In a country where one fifth of the population struggle to earn for two-time meal, such an hypocritical status symbol has to be curbed by all means.
Am genuine attempt was made by MP Ranjeet Ranjan in 2016, by moving the Marriages (Compulsory Registration and Prevention of Wasteful Expenditure) private bill in parliament.The bill proposed to limit the number of guests and dishes served to avoid waste, and also put a "tax" on the most extravagant newlyweds.Those who spend over 500,000 rupees ($7,500; £6,000) was to give 10% of the overall cost to poorer brides to help them pay for their weddings.
The Bill also proposed that "if any family intends to spend more than Rs 5 lakh towards expenditure on marriage, such family shall declare the amount proposed to be spent in advance to the appropriate government and contribute 10 per cent of such amount in a welfare fund which shall be established by the appropriate government to assist the poor and Below Poverty Line families for the marriage of their daughters".
Another bill was introduced in 2017 in the Lok Sabha by Gopal Chinayya Shetty of the BJP, Earlier, in 2011, Akhilesh Das Gupta also introduced a bill to curb extravagant weddings in the Rajya Sabha.
As many as ten such bills were introduced in the Parliament in the last 35 years. Five of these bills were introduced in the Lok Sabha and the remaining five in the Rajya Sabha. Seven of them have lapsed. The three are still shown as pending on the Lok Sabha website. Let us hope prime minister Modi's "New India" vision has some place for curbing " lavish wedding".