The Billionaires of the Raj
India is now the world’s fastest-growing economy and about to become the third largest economy in terms of purchasing power as foreign investors are rushing in.
In The Billionaire Raj, to make India more accessible to the Western Investor, Crabtree draws an analogy between America’s gilded age at the end of the 19th century with the newest of India’s billionaires, as now India has more billionaires than Russia.
While Vijay Mallya, Nirav Modi and Lalit Modi languishes in exile in Britain, other major Bolly garchs prosper at home despite series of scandals, including issuing jewel-encrusted invitations to their children’s weddings, these tycoons exert huge power in both business and politics.
The boom was a result of globalisation from 1991-2008, when India initiated reforms to escape from four decades of conservative socialism, advocated by Jawaharlal Nehru, which did not trust private business and put the state in command. As the Indian state is inefficient and disastrous in running a business. Its national airline Air India racked up billion in lossess and banks mired in non-performing loans.
In 1991, Manmohan Singh , then finance minister, began to liberalise the economy as tariffs were slashed, import licensing was removed, and the rupee was devalued twice within a week. The reforms took time to work but, from 1998 onwards the economy secured a high single-digit growth rates, 3 per cent per year that prevailed during the first 30 years of Independence.
Crabtree describes Mukesh Ambani’s towering residential extravaganza Antilla, the most expensive house ever built in India, which dominates the Mumbai skyline, the fugitive Vijay Mallya, a drinks tycoon who was once known as the King of good times.,Gautam Adani, an infrastructure entrepreneur who owns ports, mines and refineries, Dhirubhai Ambani, the Patriarch of the Reliance group.
Corruption has gone deep into the system and elections cannot be financed with just legally declared donations. The donors want to escape the attention of the taxman, so also party leaders.
The Billionaire Raj: A Journey through India’s new Gilded Age by James Crabtree, Oneworld £1899, 354 pages.