The seven-year courtship of Anant Ambani and Radhika Ambani has summed up in seven months of extravagant pre wedding ceremonies before getting married on July 12, 2024. Anant Ambani is the youngest son of India’s richest business tycoon, and Radhika is also the youngest daughter of Viren Merchant, another business tycoon in India.
Business is meant to generate revenue from ideas, and the idea behind marriages is that marriages are made in heaven, and Ambani’s has tried to relive that idea into reality, which appears perfectly alright from their stature of personality, but it raises several questions about the extravagant ceremony.
The total money spent on this wedding ceremony could have bailed out Pakistan from the quagmire of bankruptcy. But this overwhelming amount is still considered to be a lesser amount of money than Indian families generally spend on their children’s wedding ceremonies. Whatever the wealth Indian parents accumulate working their whole lives, they normally splurge on the weddings of their children, and by this logic, Ambani’s wedding festivities are quite normal if you compare their net worth with the money they spent on this grand ceremony. In other words, Ambani's extravagant wedding is a miserly act in comparison with normal Indian family wedding customs.
However, in urban areas, the Indian cost of wedding ceremonies on average ranges from 5 lakhs to 20 lakhs. Now, it will have a cascading effect on wedding ceremonies in India because everyone loves to get inspired by influential people. Spending money on social gatherings is contagious, and people get affected very easily. The cost of the wedding ceremony will be 10% to 20% higher from now on.
Having said that, such extravagant marriages are going to encourage dowry cases in India. As per the reports produced by the Dowry Prohibition Act of 1961, the total number of dowry-related crimes registered in 2022 was over 6,000. If wedding ceremonies are performed in such a grand manner by influential people like business tycoons, people will tend to become confident in asserting their dowry claim. However strong the rule, implementation will be tough, practically. And, this is happening in India presently. We live in a country where 80 crore people depend on a monthly free ration being provided by the government of India.