the growth of an industry with many dark facets

This year the wedding season in India promises to be more lavish than ever. Many couples had decided to put it off due to the pandemic. According to some estimates, it has become the fourth largest industry in the country. But problems with the payment of dowry are still the cause of the murder of some 8,000 women a year.

Milan () – Many middle-class Indian couples who postponed their wedding during the pandemic decided that the time had come to get married. The wedding season in India, which begins this month, promises to be more lavish than ever. The festivities in India can last for several days – depending on the region – and they are certainly not cheap.

According to Praveen Khandelwal, secretary general of the Confederation of All India Traders, which represents small and medium-sized businesses, annual spending on weddings amounts to $130 billion. The figure would make the wedding industry the fourth largest in the country after energy, banking and insurance. Khandelwal told The Economist that he expects 2.5 million weddings between November and December – the most popular months because there are no rains, and immediately after the Hindu festival of Diwali – and more than 4 million between April and July. Vikaas Gutgutia, founder and CEO of Ferns N Petals, a wedding supply company, believes instead that the boom could be 200% despite the sharp increase in costs.

In India there are an average of 10 million weddings per year and the industry is growing at a rate of around 25-30%. Factors that have contributed to this increase are urbanization, increased purchasing power of the middle class, and a very young population.

A multitude of different sectors are involved in the organization of weddings, from jewelers and tailors to catering services. Weddings are one reason India needs to import so much gold – 1,050 tonnes last year worth $46 billion. The first jewels are given to a girl a few weeks after her birth, but at the time of the wedding the bride is covered with valuable jewels from head to toe.

Actually the business starts even before the bride and groom meet: the traditional matchmakers, the parents, still place ads in the Sunday paper in the hope that someone interested in the detailed description of their son or daughter will show up. But today many also rely on dating sites. The largest, publicly traded matrimony.com, has a market value of $160 million. Last year it registered a turnover of 57 million dollars, 850 thousand subscribers and 100 thousand successful meetings.

In India more than 90% of marriages are still arranged. And although the payment of dowry was declared illegal in 1961, nothing has changed in recent decades. According to a World Bank study that analyzed 400,000 weddings that took place between 1960 and 2008 in rural areas, the families of the bride continue to pay seven times more than the families of the groom. It is a constant that has been found in all religious groups, including Christians and Sikhs, and shows how ingrained tradition is in Indian culture.

A high rate of homicide and suicide is also associated with dowry. India is the first country in the world for dowry-related murders, although there has been a slight decline in recent years: between 2012 and 2016 there were 8,005 dowry deaths, compared to 7,093 in the period 2017-2021. Around 40-50% of femicides between 1999 and 2016 were related to dowry; the groom expects expensive gifts and if they don’t come he may continue to threaten and blackmail the bride’s family or even push his wife to suicide. Approximately 20 Indian women die per day due to these kinds of reasons.

There is another important aspect: according to data from 2014, only 5.8% of marriages take place between people of different castes And while 55% of millennials say they are in favor of interreligious marriages, 70% of Indian parents are adamantly opposed to their children marrying someone from a lower caste.

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