Indians give utmost importance to their children’s education and marriage. When it comes to wedding, Indians celebrate it in the most unique manner. Most of the Indians spend crores of rupees especially on marriage.
Instead of doing every ritual in marriage in a traditional way, most of the people replaced it with “show off their property”. They feel its pride to perform wedding in a luxurious way.
Parents save their pension amount, do fixed deposits and spends money on several other saving schemes especially to celebrate their children’s marriage in a lavish way. Lot of food and money goes waste in these weddings which can actually feed lot many poor people.
Government came up with an innovative step by proposing a bill in Lok Sabha. The bill says, if a person was caught spending above 5 Lakhs in a wedding then he has to donate 10% of the amount for the marriage of poor girls.
For Instance, if one spends Rs 5 lakhs, an amount of Rs 50,000 has to be contributed for marriages of poor girls.
Here are the important lines from bill:
“If any family intends to spend more than Rs 5 lakh towards expenditure on marriage, such family shall declare the amount proposed to be spent in advance to the appropriate government and contribute 10 per cent of such amount in a welfare fund which shall be established by the appropriate government to assist the poor and Below Poverty Line families for the marriage of their daughters”.
The Marriages (Compulsory Registration and Prevention of Wasteful Expenditure) Bill, 2016 was introduced by Ranjeet Ranjan (Congress MP), MP Pappu Yadav’s wife, and might be discussed in the upcoming parliament session.
He said, “Great importance should be assigned to the solemnization of marriage between two individuals. But unfortunately, these days a tendency of celebrating marriages with pomp and show and spending lavishly growing in the country.”
If this bill becomes a Law, we may see some irrational behaviour from people.
Let’s hope things get modified with this new scheme.