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Comment by sidm83 | Hacker News Reader

This was the case earlier but not so for a while. Current use of gold is mainly for jewellery, especially in weddings. This is a typical bride in South India - https://www.bookeventz.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/x...

Since about 2-3 decades, apart from use in jewellery, gold has been at best an 'alternative asset class' here. Unless of course one needs to hide cash income from the tax man.

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Unless the lady in the photo is rich, I bet most of her jewellery is fake.

Actually not. It is a huge matter of "pride" in South Indian weddings when the bride wears a lot of gold, my interpretation is that this is just one way to carry on with the traditions of dowry. Fake jewelry for the purposes of marriage is not as common in South India as it is in other parts of the country.

Is the jewellery borrowed or rented for the wedding or is it purchased and kept? That looks like a quite substantial amount of gold, like tens of thousands of USD worth. If she/they own that, I would kind of classify her/them as rich.

Gold jewelry is a big deal is South India. I know of a maid making $4-500 a month in Singapore. When she went back to visit after 2 years took $8000 worth of gold to give as gift to her family members. In other words 85%-90% of her total earnings over 2 years.

Huh! That's fascinating!

Orrrrr that was the best way to transfer it tax free.

It’s worth seeing this type of Indian gold jewelry up close. The craftsman are incredible skilled at taking relatively small amounts of gold and making them look bigger, through hollow portions, relief patterns on very thin plate, and similar.

Go check out an actual market for this type of gold some time, it’s eye opening.

With that said it’s still a lot of gold in that photo, to be fair.

Average South Asian wedding in California is $100-150k I read somewhere, so I wouldn't doubt it being real when weddings are generally paid for by the bride and groom's families.

Gold jewellery is still prized as an asset that will help young girls to get a "good" husband.

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