Ostentatious Obligations

An austerity bill by a luxury biker has few rich takers desperate to splurge.

- Stuti Agarwal

WITH only a few months left for the celebrations to begin, Anisha Chugh is now beginning to eat, breathe and live her wedding—wanting to make sure everything pans out exactly as she wants it to. She is even beginning to dream caterers, pandals, lehengas and guest lists for multiple functions, which are almost obligatory for most middle and upper class Indian weddings. But of late, a woman from Bihar, astride on a Harley-Davidson super bike, is looking to downsize all big wedding plans, including Anisha’s.

She’s the Congress MP who landed up at Parliament in the luxury bike last year—Ranjeet Ranjan, wife of Pappu Yadav, the politician from Bihar with a range of criminal cases against him. She recently introduced ‘The Marriages (Compulsory Registration and Prevention of Wasteful Expenditure) Bill, 2016, in the Lok Sabha—a private member’s bill. According to its provisions, families wanting to spend above the stipulated Rs 5 lakh on a wedding must inform the government of their expenses and contribute 10 per cent of it to the yet to be made ‘fund for the wedding expenses of poor girls’.

What’s more, the bill also envisages restriction on the number of people one can invite for weddings and even sets a limit on the number of dishes to be served. “The purpose of the bill is to prohibit extravagant and wasteful expenditure on marriages and to enforce simpler solemnisation,” Ranjan told reporters.

The discussion on the bill is likely to be taken up once the Parliament resumes on March 9. This would have given sleepless nights to the country’s mammoth Rs 1 lakh ­crore wedding industry but, fortunately for them, it is a private member bill, which means it has a very low chance of being passed in parliament.