Anant Ambani’s marriage ceremony dragged as if all lights under the Sun as Ambanis had made it truly phenomenal. Guests included a very large number of national and international personalities like ex-Prime Minister of UK Tony Blair & Boris Johnson, Kim and Khloé Kardashian, Nick Jonas and Priyanka Chopra, John Cena, Stylist Law Roach are just some of the names. While such an event was the family event of Ambanis, it stirred the national & international social space. A sect of the Western Society commented on it apparently to express their jealousy of the wealth-exhibition by an Indian Billionaire. Such people are those who perhaps can’t forget that once-upon-a-time they colonized Bharat & managed to siphon her wealth out to build their own prosperity. We have heard the external affairs Minister S. Jaishankar speak in the recent past on how Britain plundered a dollar 45 trillion from Bharat.
Social media was flooded with videos & photographs (some of which were even AI generated to sensitize the populace beyond a critical level) portraying poverty in India’s general populace. Obnoxious videos displayed street-dwellers in Bharat living in shanties on the pavements of city roads. While such extremely poor street-dwellers are there in all countries, some promotion houses chose to be selective to show only Bharat’s street-dwellers because wealth of Ambanis perhaps made them feel uncomfortable.
Indian Marxists & Urban Naxals disseminated such materials in the social media. P Sainath’s post on X handle appeared to be taunting hiccups against Ambani & Ambani-funded media who promoted the wedding ceremony in a variety of ways. His arguments, though flawed, could gush out an Indian Marxist’s frustration about the big fat Indian wedding of the Ambani family. “In our decades-old ongoing agrarian crisis, lakhs of weddings in farming communities have collapsed. In one year, Maharashtra officially recorded more than 3 lakh families in just six districts with daughters whose marriages they could not afford. That was a factor in some farmer suicides – followed in some cases by the suicides of the daughters, feeling responsible for their fathers’ deaths.” Wrote Shri Sainath. Even then, such intellectuals of Bharat had opposed the Farm Laws which were drafted to meet up the agrarian crises of Bharat once and for all and aimed at turning the agricultural producers prosper in their own capacity opening the complete agrarian market for them. Therefore, Sainath’s tears for the farmers of Maharashtra appeared crocodile’s tears in reality as Marxists didn’t wish to see Indian farmers as entrepreneurs.
Marxists consistently pose against big fat Indian weddings because such weddings promote homogenous economic growth. The money spent in the wedding percolates down real time to all socio-economic levels of the Indian market. As reported by Moneycontrol, Indian wedding industry “is estimated to have grown to $130 billion, second only to food and groceries in terms of consumption, thus driving a huge economic boom, according to a recent Jefferies report.” The Jefferies report also suggests India’s average wedding expenditure to be 5 times the country’s per capita GDP of 2.4 lakhs which is significantly higher than several other economies. This is what the Marxists dislike as they have terrible apathy towards Bharat’s Hindu way of life. Indians’ priority of making marriages big fat events reflects their orientation & commitment towards community-living cultivating social bondage with each other which Marxists can’t uphold because they’re apparently committed to breaking the Indian society & their mutual inter-dependence upon each other. Sainath’s frustration about Anant Ambani’s 5000 Crore marriage, hence, appeared quite obvious.
While some people lamented loss of foreign reserve as Ambanis paid Western performers in international currency, they perhaps missed the point that as an Indian Multinational, Reliance Group operates in various countries too & earn from there adding to the foreign reserve of Bharat from exports. It was indeed a good gesture by Ambanis to spend some of their wedding budget for some other countries too as this is unlike the East India Company’s psyche that concentrated solely on siphoning the Indian wealth & resources out to Britain. Ambanis reflected on Bharatiya values and psyche of inclusivity.
A Bengali lady posted pathetic photographs of street-dwellers along with a photograph of Nita Ambani wearing a necklace of Rs 500 crore to portray the contrast & wrote, “At the $3.65 poverty line, India accounts for 40 per cent of the global poverty rate of 24.1 per cent.” While she didn’t like Nita Ambani wearing a Rs 500 Crore necklace, she & her likes never raised the pertinent question why West Bengal under Mamata Banerjee was keeping the civic police staff of West Bengal Government just at that $3.65 poverty line & not paying the due dearness allowance to the West Bengal Government employees. In terms of the International Poverty Line as defined by the World Bank, extreme poverty is designated at $2.15 per person per day (less than which is below poverty line) while $3.65 per person per day is categorized as the lower-middle income category and $6.85 as the upper-middle income one. As per this definition, people earning at the rate of $3.65/person/day equals to Rs 9307.50 per month which is a lower-middle income quantity as per World Bank definition. West Bengal Govt pays Rs. 10000.00 per month to its civic police staff keeping them barely at the lower-middle income line. While the civic police staff of the Govt earns this little, how low would people be earning by menial jobs in West Bengal? And at such rates of poverty, how much does West Bengal contribute to Indian and Global Poverty is not being discussed by the Marxists in the social space.
While such people highlights reports of NGOs like Oxfam to depict wealth inequalities in Bharat, they never talk about wealth inequalities in a liberal-ruled State like West Bengal. They don’t describe that per capita GDP of West Bengal (1.41 lacs) is one of India’s lowest amongst all States & much lower than the national average per capita GDP (2.4 lacs) while the ruling party leaders, workers & goons have visibly amassed unlimited wealth. Likewise, while West Bengal Government is not paying the due percentage of dearness allowance & the pending amount of arrear DA to its employees, ruling party honchos are being seen to display enormous volume of dirty money. Marxists have problems about an industrialist’s wealth & its display but they are ‘cool’ about I.N.D.I. Alliance partners’ dirty money. This double standard should have been surprising but it is not.
For a fair idea of the poverty scenario of Bharat across the last decade, I would share my observations & interpretations here based on some scholarly works & research outputs. In 2011, as per the then international poverty line of $1 per day per person, percentage of poor people in India was around 34 per cent (measured at 1993 purchasing power parity exchange rates). This percentage was as high as 80 per cent once $2 per person per day was considered to be the poverty threshold.¹ However, at the current $2.15 as the international poverty line, given below please find a table depicting the poverty rates in India in past years with data sourced from the World Bank.²
This shows rate of poverty is showing a reducing trend in India.
While Marxists are crying ‘poverty’ looking at Anant Ambani’s wedding, they are not brainstorming on increasing population (which is a significant parameter adding to poverty in Bharat) and the importance of uniform civil code to tackle that. While they’re crying Global Hunger Index & Bharat’s rank in it, they have perhaps forgotten that people died out of starvation in West Bengal’s Amlashol (of Jhargram district) in 2004 & then CM Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee (CPM) admitted it in the West Bengal State Assembly. Not only that, Food Riots over shortage of food & massive corruption in Public Distribution System took in its grip West Bengal districts like Bankura, Bardhaman & Birbhum in 2007 under the Marxists’ rule wherein 3 persons died & more than 300 people got injured. People died out of starvation in several places like North Bengal & Jangalmahal under the rule of Mamata Banerjee too, but liberals prefer not to talk about such topics. They are also perhaps embarrassed by the fact that Ambanis organised vandara (free food) for 9000 people daily for all 40 days of their wedding event span.
While some sections of the Indian political sphere prefer to engage in crying ‘hunger’ & ‘poverty’, Bharat Sarkar under Narendra Modi launched Pradhanmantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojna (PMGKAY) during the Covid-19 Pandemic time that provided & still providing food grains to 80 Crores Indians for free.
Ambani-wedding was a display of grandeur of Bharatiya wealth & parampara (culture). It provided us with some glimpses of the ancient prosperous Bharatvarsha which is something to be proud of, not jealous. But those who want to refute the historical reality of the ancient heritage of Bharat would not be able to accept that with ease.
