Recently, I had a discussion with a person of my village who had just fixed his daughter’s marriage. The person was a vehicle driver by profession and his earning was somewhere between 15k-20k monthly.
On discussion I came to know that total marriage expenses was expected to be around 5 Lacs. He had a savings of 3 Lacs. For the remaining 2 Lacs, he was planning to take a loan from a local lender at a rate of 3% on monthly basis. Yes, you heard it right! 3% on a monthly basis which makes it 36% annually!
A person with a earning of 15k per month would be paying 6k per month as interest. Principal amount would have to be paid in addition to that.
The question which arises here is why would he have to spend 5 Lacs for his daughter’s marriage even though he wasn’t capable. It is because the society wouldn’t accept him, had he chosen to not to fulfil the society’s rotten belief system.
That society which has been totally brainwashed by the wedding industry to believe that if you are marrying then it has to be a grand one regardless of your financially capabilities.
This reminded me of a latest research on a comparison between wedding expenses and education expenditure. According to the research, “Indians spend almost twice as much on weddings as they do on education.”
The below comparison shows the significant discrepancy between Wedding Expenses and Education Expenditure.
The wedding industry thrives on exploiting hollow cultural traditions and superstitions, far removed from the core message of Indian philosophy.
It is these Expensive weddings which send a message that parents must save large sums for their daughter’s marriage from birth which ultimately lead to foeticide or relegating her education and self-development to secondary status in pursuit of a ‘dream wedding’.
Our excessive focus on such events reflects a lack of higher purpose in our lives. We can ignore these facts, or we can take decisive steps towards changing social consciousness. Only then can we offer better lives to our daughters and ourselves.
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