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I have seen a lot of words used to describe the wedding of Anant Ambani, the youngest son of Asia’s richest man, to pharmaceuticals heiress Radhika Merchant. “Lavish” gets a lot of play. Then there’s “extravagant”, “opulent”, “glamorous”, luxurious”, “grand”. I’ve seen the “there are weddings and then there’s the Ambani wedding” formulation used by at least three magazines, too.
But grotesque? Obscene? Distasteful displays of wealth in a country — India — where inequality has increased so dramatically over the past decade or so? Maybe I’m looking in the wrong places, but I haven’t come across many such accusations. Especially surprising, from certain corners of the British press in particular, has been the lack of digs at former prime ministers Tony Blair and Boris Johnson, both of whom flew to Mumbai with their wives for the occasion.
Whatever happened to the great British tradition of wealth-shaming? It seems to have gone out of fashion. It’s not that I want to bring it back per se — particularly when it veers into snobbery about the nouveaux riches — but I do fear its absence is symptomatic of a culture that has swung too far in the opposite direction. We have become comfortable heaping praise on the rich for being rich, and seem to have lost our distaste for ostentatious displays of wealth.
It has become almost impossible to mention a successful businessman or woman without mentioning their net worth, while some of those who take the top spots show little humility about it. Elon Musk, in characteristically grown-up style, tweeted a silver medal emoji at Jeff Bezos when he overtook him as the world’s richest man in 2021. He told Forbes that he would send the Amazon founder “a giant statue of the digit ‘2’ to Jeffrey B., along with a silver medal”.
The Ambani wedding guest list gave Davos a run for its money. Members of the global elite in attendance included Indian premier Narendra Modi, former US secretary of state — and darling of Davos — John Kerry, and, of course, two Kardashians. And that was just the final wedding party itself, which took place last weekend. The pre-wedding celebrations in March included Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Hillary Clinton and Ivanka Trump. The five months of nuptial events — reported to have cost $600mn — took place not just in India but in Italy, Cannes and on a cruise ship in the Med, and featured performances from Rihanna, Justin Bieber, the Backstreet Boys and Katy Perry.
One can only imagine the carbon emissions. The Indian Defence Force is reported to have stepped in to allow 600 inbound and outbound flights over five days at the usually sleepy Jamnagar airport for the celebrations in March (including one private jet carrying Rihanna, and another carrying her luggage and staff), while the chief executive of private jet company Club One Air told Reuters that the Ambanis hired three jets to ferry around those guests who did not have their own private planes to get to the celebrations.
And yet, while it has become an annual tradition to scoff at the billionaires, bankers and world leaders who fly into Davos every January to discuss the various ways that they are going to save the world, the scorn does not seem to extend to less lofty pursuits. As long as you are not being a hypocrite it seems, but simply just basking in your vast fortune without pretending you’re doing anything more worthwhile, you’re safe.
Why does society now seem more comfortable with such displays of wealth? Part of it comes down to the way that the internet and social media have homogenised culture and spread western values, particularly American ones, across the globe. In the US, a land where — in principle, if not always in practice — anyone can make it to the top, there has not, historically, existed the same shyness around wealth that we have in class-conscious Britain. Social media influencers such as the “self-made” Kylie Jenner have glorified and, in a funny way, normalised huge levels of wealth.
But China shows that things might be on the turn in some places. Fifteen years since the global financial crisis, economic growth is slowing again there. In April, its internet regulator announced it was starting a campaign penalising “wealth-flaunting”. Authorities have suspended the social media accounts of many wealthy Chinese social media influencers in recent months, such as Wang Hongquanxing, known as “China’s Kim Kardashian”. According to Bain & Company, growing economic instability in China is driving a “luxury shame” of the sort the US saw in the financial crisis.
I have no particular desire to luxury-shame the Ambanis for their wedding, and neither do I endorse closing down the social media accounts of the rich. But I do believe it’s high time that we stop worshipping at the feet of the wealthy. Let’s find some more important things to value. And for God’s sake, let’s ban the billionaires’ lists.
