Men like Mallya and Modi were members of India’s expanding billionaire class, of whom there are now 119 members, according to Forbes magazine. Last year their collective worth amounted to $440bn – more than in any other country, bar the US and China. By contrast, the average person in India earns barely $1,700 a year. Given its early stage of economic development, India’s new hyper-wealthy elite have accumulated more money, more quickly, than their plutocratic peers in almost any country in history.
The point rather being that the staggering economic growth in an economy of 1.2 billion people is going to produce some winners.
The Ambani Brothers for example, one’s lost a fortune, the other gained one, the competition between the two having brought lower cost mobile telecoms and internet to hundreds of millions. The winners being – the hundreds of millions of course.
Narendra Modi pledged to end a situation in which the country’s ultra-wealthy – sometimes called “Bollygarchs” – appeared to live by one set of rules, while India’s 1.3 billion people operated by another. Yet as they continue to hide out in cities like London, men like Mallya and Nirav Modi have come to be seen as representing the failure of that pledge;
That they’re in London hiding out would seem to show that the Indian authorities are no longer doormats for the rich….
So now some percentage of India’s billionaires have decamped for London, India is better off and Britain is worse off, right?
Actually I do think Britain is worse off but I fail to see how British prostitutes and vintners thriving helps India one bit.
The Ambani’s providing some great soap opera as they went two different ways after an epic legal battle, one made a large fortune in telco the other a crazy large fortune in industrials. Then the richer one entered the telco space, triggered a price war, made several companies go bust including his brothers, then offered a rescue bid where he would buy many of the assets of his brothers company. Christmas must be awkward.
And as you note the price war has created massively cheaper telco for all
Std CM diatribe. Rich are corrupt, so we should kill them and take their stuff.
‘Meanwhile, as democracy falters in the west’
So it’s okay to kill the rich in the west and take their stuff, too.
the average person in India earns barely $1,700 a year
For several decades after independence, India was afflicted by commies in state government and the ripple effects of Gandhi’s half-witted mysticism and anti-western prejudice. That sort of nonsense tends to depress earnings…
@ MC
The problem wasn’t the Commies in a couple of state governments, it was the Socialists from Cambridge and the LSE in the national government. If it had just been commies in Kerala and West Bengal then everywhere could have prospered.
Socialism is enshrined in the Indian constitution, however it doesn’t socialism.