‘Billionaire Raj’ Is Pushing India Toward Autocracy https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-03-25/india-election-billionaire-raj-is-backing-modi-and-leading-to-autocracy
The super-rich have opened their wallets to Modi, and income inequality has soared over the past d https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-03-25/india-election-billionaire-raj-is-backing-modi-and-leading-to-autocracy...While inequality has grown since the 1980s, in step with a lopsided distribution of gains from globalization across the world, Modi’s reign has spawned a tiny class of super-rich. Fewer than 10,000 individuals in a population of 920 million adults earn an average 480 million rupees ($5.7 million), more than 2,000 times the average income of $2,800. Nine out of 10 Indians earn less than the average...
A handful of tycoons — such as Mukesh Ambani, Gautam Adani and Sajjan Jindal — have entered the leagues of the world’s richest people. They did so not by putting innovative products and services in global markets, but by carving up domestic industries such as transportation, telecom, power and gas, metals, retail, media and new energy. The Modi government rewarded large businesses with tax cuts and awarded them prized monopoly assets like airports. The billionaires got juicy deals when buying bankrupt firms and lobbied — often successfully — for protectionist trade policies.