When it involves huge fats weddings, India has no actual competitors and loads of critics. A clutch of journalists, activists and social-media busybodies are aghast on the scale of the prewedding festivities that this month drew celebrities and enterprise titans from throughout the globe to the economic city of Jamnagar in Gujarat to rejoice the union of Anant Ambani, youngest son of Indian multibillionaire Mukesh Ambani, and Radhika Merchant, daughter of one other Indian tycoon.

Critics of the Ambani extravaganza are likely to forged their argument in ethical phrases. “By any measure India is a grotesque plutocracy,” wrote political scientist Pratap Bhanu Mehta. The Daily Mail bemoaned the ostentatious display of wealth “just yards from where some of the poorest people on earth eke out a living.” Activist lawyer Prashant Bhushan known as the celebration a “nauseatingly vulgar display of wealth & power.” A author within the Guardian described it as “an ode to excess” with “a feast which even Nero might have thought a little over the top.”

Such criticisms are misguided. For India, nonetheless recovering from greater than 4 failed many years of socialism, the open celebration of wealth is a welcome improvement. If the purpose is to eradicate deprivation, then Indians are higher off wanting as much as the Ambanis’ billionaire bling than to Mahatma Gandhi’s perfect of holy poverty. The West too may have a far simpler time advancing its personal objectives—amongst them deepening strategic ties and tempering illiberalism—if it’s coping with an India whose elites sometimes throw over-the-top events quite than one which always lectures the world on the failings of capitalism.

Read the complete article at The Wall Street Journal