The wedding industry is 3% of India’s GDP, comparable to any other industries. If we spend more on a wedding, we spend that money on our primary product & service providers such as caterers, wedding venues, textile shops, jewellery shops, and many more. Which, in course, trickles down to indirect transactions like the grocery supplier for the caterer, the IT team who sold the billing software to the textiles, the mining company who dug up the gold, and even the lady who cleaned the venue floor, which accelerates our GDP even further, right?
True, absolutely. Still, should we spend more on weddings?
That brings the question: where should we spend? Ideally, where we should spend money is either something that will make us more money or where we “can’t not” (meaning where we can’t afford to not spend, such as paying for your grandma’s hospital bills, which is not going to give you monetary returns unless the family property is yet to be partitioned).
Is a grandiose wedding going to make you more money?
It can, if you have a local business, by increasing your brand value among the people in your locality. It will help if you’re politically active and in need of the brand value. But if you are a salaried family consuming products and
services, what does brand value bring you, other than more people trying to sell you stuff and take your money? This is true for any luxury that is focused on shininess rather than comfort. It tries to increase your personal brand value.
My question is: why waste money on marketing when you have nothing to sell?
Coming back to increasing GDP by an expensive wedding:
Let’s look at a country of which citizens help the GDP with extensive spending. Which in fact is the country with the most GDP, the US of A. The USA has the biggest GDP on the planet, fuelled by their internal consumption; achieved by a spending habit by their citizens, majority of which squeeze every bit of the credit accessible to consume stuff and not sparing enough to invest. When they invest, their investing patterns are the most aggressive. Why do you think their economy is this volatile? A recession every 7-8 years? A market correction
almost always suffocates, and a majority of the common people hold on for dear life?
Let’s look at other western countries like Switzerland and Germany. They have a high per capita savings, which makes the economy resilient. Exports crashed in 2000 and in 2008, but the internal consumption kept the economy resilient. Resilient doesn’t mean “cool,” though.
A mix of savings, easily liquifiable assets, and safe bets do provide a safety net—not just for the citizen, but for the country too. But hey, we wouldn’t look cool.
But let’s not forget that the US is the wealthiest country and has a great avg. GDP growth rate in the long term, compared to countries like Switzerland. Maybe “faking it till you make it” is also a way after all.
The answer lies in the median wealth per capita of the countries. Switzerland has more median growth when compared to the US, meaning common people of the US are poorer than the common Swiss. The ones who make the money in the US are the rich—the one category I mentioned earlier who have something to sell, something to gain by going through these aggressive habits and through this cycle of boom and bust.
So, If you are sure that you gain something, by all means, please do.
Last point on increasing our GDP through expensive weddings: A comparable industry by size to the wedding industry is the pharmacy industry. It too holds 3% of our GDP. Shall we pop some random pills that we don’t need to build up our great nation?
- By your friendly neighbourhood analyst
