A World Gold Council report says that India’s gold consumption has increased by a whopping 78.6% in 2021. Considering that the price of gold in the one-year period had risen by over 20%, it is hard to make sense of the trend.
Recently, at a wedding, I saw the bride and several women guests in the wedding hall wearing an eye-popping amount of chunky gold jewellery! Gold ornaments have always been a part of the Indian bridal trousseau, but the mega-sized ornaments have made the appearance only over the past decade. Clearly, the billboards of leading jewellery shops showing slender brides adorned with several bulky ornaments all over, had successfully established such a “bridal look”.
I fail to understand how modern girls could agree to possess and wear such high-valued pieces. They are college educated and empowered. Their parents too are liberated enough to ensure that daughters and sons are given the same educational and career opportunities. The law of the land has also laid down that daughters and sons shall inherit an equal share of the family property.
Yet, at the daughter’s wedding, parents follow the retro custom of spending an enormous amount of money, with a big part of it going into gold.
How do the millennial girls reconcile this practice with their strong views on gender equality? How is it that the youngsters who choose to watch only the shows streamed online and align their style and thoughts with those of the westerners, fail to observe that the westerners, even at weddings, do not put on multiple expensive ornaments and dress like a Christmas tree?
Gold mining ravages the landscape, destroys vital ecosystems and poisons groundwater. How could one be a global citizen if the thinking has not expanded to grasp the environmental consequences of one’s actions?
What use is college education if one cannot comprehend the economic repercussions of the country’s spiralling demand for gold? Agreed that a bride has to look grand and special on her most important day. But it doesn’t have to be achieved with gold. Ornaments made with colourful flowers, beads, semi-precious stones and even zari-embroidered fabric look dressy and glamourous. If the rich initiate the change, the others will readily follow. And India would shed the dubious distinction of being the world’s top consumer of gold.
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