Before independence, India was subjugated by imperial administrators and various maharajas and the feudal monarchies they led. In the decades after 1947 India, at least, grew economically more equal, with an elite class that lived modestly by the standards of the industrialised West.
All changed rapidly from the beginning of the 2000s as wealth grew first to an educated, globally connected elite. Nothing symbolizes the power of India’s new elite more starkly than Antilia, the steel and glass tower rising 160 meters in height, the residential skyscraper of Mukesh Ambani.
In 2008, India’s new billionaire fortune became apparent, and the wealth that accumulated at the very top, elite, was eye-catching, so much so that economist Raghuram Rajan, asked, ‘If Russia is an oligarchy, how long can we resist calling India one?’
Raghuram Rajan questioned India’s....
