In 2003, the massive market for gold in India was evident when people queued up to sell their jewellery to cash in as gold prices peaked. India drives the trade for precious metal and gold as jewellery is traditionally bought by families building their daughters dowries.
Gold jewellery – a source of wealth
Gold jewellery has always been a source of wealth for the country, and parents start to buy gold jewellery at the birth of a daughter with their eyes already set on her wedding day. Gold jewellery isn’t just associated with dowries, but just about every special occasion in an Indian’s life from weddings to moving home. Gold jewellery is simultaneously a status symbol and instrument of adornment as well as an investment.
Diamonds and jewellery trends
On an average year, India can import around 825 tonnes of gold, which is about a quarter of global gold demand; although in 2003 many Indians cashed in on their gold and switched their interest to diamonds in the hope that they could buy gold cheaper in the future. Diamonds became fashionable in India as a jewellery trend.
Jewellery fraud
But the dowry system where the daughter’s husband receives jewellery and gold as payment is vulnerable to fraud. Last year, India called for new laws to try and stop non-Indians marrying Indian women, collecting their dowry of jewellery, and then abandoning their new wives. Thousands of families have been victims of ‘dowry fraud’. And it isn’t just the wealth of the family that is affected – many of the women believe they were married for love and have children with their new husbands, only to be deserted once the dowry’s been received.
Exploitation
It’s thought that men from all over the world are exploiting the system to get their hands on the family jewellery, including men from Britain, America and Canada. There has been outrage in India at the idea of western men with comfortable lifestyles defrauding Indian women and ruining them financially, socially and emotionally by stealing the jewellery and other valuables collected in dowries.
Dowry Debate
Dowries have been the subject of much controversy and debate in modern India, and now many are calling for more stringent legislation and even the registration of non-Indian men who marry in the country so that they are traceable if they do steal the family jewellery.