Tanya Basu: The $100m Wedding Beyonce Played Reveals India's Stark Contrasts

By Dilip -
Ultimately, these weddings compete in the ultra competitive social media space to capture our voyeuristic attention: our likes, and our conversations. They also uncomfortably, silently, illustrate the chasm between the haves and the have-nots, and idolize excessive consumption in the race to be ever more relevant and spectacular. The social media images may be pretty, but the bigger story of wealth and inequality underpinning them is far more complex, and can't be smoothed over with any amount of diamonds and airbrushing...

... what I don’t understand, and can’t come to grips with, is how throwing a $100 million wedding achieves anything beyond bragging rights. Sure, it’s a wedding, just one wedding, but still it’s worth asking: What does the deluge of conspicuous consumption mean in the face of the problems facing many of Ambani’s employees and their families and fellow countrymen? What does it mean to throw a $100 million wedding when a significant portion of the population struggle to earn even $1 a day?


“Imagine the impact #AmbaniWedding would have had if Mukesh donated hundreds of crores spent on silly dance & music extravaganza & charter flts [sic] to social causes,” a former diplomat tweeted, suggesting the couple could have easily had a simpler wedding and donated the rest of their budget...
read more:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-dollar100m-wedding-beyonce-played-reveals-indias-stark-contrasts?ref=home

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