Profligate spending
Despite all the hype which we see ad nauseum in our
electronic media and in our movies which mostly reflect the lives of upper
class, we as a people remain what can be called poor. May be, we are better off
than we were a decade or two back but we cannot say we have come out of
poverty and large sections of our population remain poor.
In contrast, we have a section, though small, who are
immensely wealthy. And this section of society with few exceptions, like to show
off their wealth. And recent phenomenon of destination weddings is one such
example. The host plans and excecutes these expensive weddings in
destinations located in other countries or expensive hotels and or resorts located away from home in our own country [ for example in Goa], Spain, Italy, Thailand appear to be the
favorite foreign destinations. Guests are flown, and that too hundreds of them in specially hired
airplanes to these places and they are wined and dined in addition to the
expensive stays. This illness is not confined to film stars and rich
sportspersons but has spread to others too, and recently I heard a not so
wealthy person did this for forms sake!
Weddings down south used to be one day affairs, occasionally
spilling over to the next day in most middle income weddings. Its no longer so.
Three day weddings are the new normal and display of wealth in some form or the
other whether one has the resources or not is the order of the day. It does not bode well that the young participants take this kind of spending on their
stride and even seem to encourage their parents.
This seven star culture as I call it, for want of a better
term, is detrimental to social progress as those deprived section of the
society, trying to emulate these rich, may be encouraged to take to
crime, extorsion, robbery as other ways of acquiring wealth is denied to this section of society. I am afraid it is already happening and we are witnessing
a steep rise in violent crime in recent times.
The solution is for the rich to temper their spending and
try and live a low key life. There are so many useful ways of spending their money.
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