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.