Inside the big fat Indian wedding: conservatism, competition and networks

The most luring aspect of an elite Indian wedding is its claim to a global yet Indian sensibility

Indian weddings are most famously imagined as enormous spectacles. This image is surely real, though representative of a small segment of the Indian population, and realised only in the world of the super-rich. Some reports have estimated the super-rich to constitute 1% of the total population, which contributes to 22% of Indian GDP.

Sociologist Patricia Uberoi writes that in South Asia, weddings are “the most visible site of conspicuous consumption and conspicuous waste”.

But my ongoing research, on the elites reveals that their weddings are more than about conspicuous consumption