evidence: The financial burden of weddings on India’s poorest families [...] "We have come across hundreds of cases in our fieldwork where marriage expenses have pushed poor families to slavery," says Subedar Singh, media coordinator at PGS. "Loans to cover wedding costs come with impossibly high interest rates, causing many families to fall into bondage to pay off the debt. Indebtedness in rural India is very high due to high expenditure on two social occasions – wedding and death ceremonies. The culture (of expensive ceremonies) is so entrenched in rural communities that it makes thousands of poor fall into debt bondage." [...] Kanyadaan India Foundation, another pan-India non-profit, was similarly set up to help poor families marry their daughters off in a dignified way. "We try to support the girl and her family by bearing all expenses of the wedding so that dowry and suicide due to lack of funds for marriages do not happen," says the organisation’s spokesperson.