South Asia Investor Review

Last few months have seen a grotesque display of obscene wealth in India, a country with well-documented levels of extreme  poverty ,  hunger  and  unemployment . Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani has splurged hundreds of millions of dollars on his son's wedding attended by top politicians including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Hollywood and Bollywood celebrities and Ambani's fellow billionaires who have accumulated vast amounts of wealth in one of the world's most unequal countries.  Experts blame it on Mr. Modi's policies promoting crony capitalism.  Viral Acharya, former deputy governor of Reserve Bank of India, told the  BBC  that their ability to acquire large distressed companies, a growing appetite for mergers and acquisitions, and India's conscious industrial policy of creating "national champions via preferential allocation of projects and in some cases regulatory agencies turning a blind eye to predatory pricing". Indian Prime Minister M...

India is one of the most unequal countries in the world, according to the  World Inequality Report 2022 . There is rising poverty and hunger. Nearly 230 million  middle class Indians  have slipped below the poverty line, constituting a 15 to 20% increase in poverty. India ranks 94th among 107 nations ranked by World Hunger Index in 2020. Other South Asians have fared better: Pakistan (88), Nepal (73), Bangladesh (75), Sri Lanka (64) and Myanmar (78) – and only Afghanistan has fared worse at 99th place. Meanwhile, the wealth of Indian billionaires jumped by 35% during the pandemic.  Income Inequality Map. Source: World Inequality Report 2022 Unemployment Crisis:  India lost 6.8 million salaried jobs and 3.5 million entrepreneurs in November alone. Many among the unemployed can no longer afford to buy food, causing a significant spike in hunger. The country's economy is finding it hard to recover from  COVID waves  and lockdowns, according to data from m...

Is India an oligarchy controlled by its 55 recently-minted billionaires whose wealth equals one-sixth of their country's GDP? The answer to this question came when, as part of India's 2G scandal revelations, the Billionaire businessman Mukesh Ambani was quoted as bragging that the ruling Congress Party is "Apni Dukan" (our shop), implying that he owns the ruling party. The scandal also produced evidence of collusion of India's corporate-owned mainstream media in their deliberate attempts to impose a blackout on the whole affair until it was finally broken by the relatively obscure Open magazine . Here's an excerpt from today's New York Times story that captures the essence of crony capitalism and the rise of Indian oligarchy as being among the world's largest: "India’s billionaires control a considerably larger share of the national wealth than do the superrich in bigger economies like those of Germany, Britain and Japan. Among the Indian bi...

The booming Bombay stock market in 2007 and the benefits of globalization have seen India's billionaires list swell to 40 on the Forbes Billionaires List. The Indian billionaires combined wealth has more than doubled from $170 billion to $351 billion in 2007. While Bill Gates has slipped to number three spot from number one, the number 4, 5, 6 and 8 spots in the top 10 are now occupied by Lakshmi Mittal, Mukesh Ambani, Anil Ambani and KP Singh from India. The news of the newly-minted Indian billionaires is bringing sharper focus on the growing rich-poor gap in India. The Times of India reports Communist Party leader Sitaram Yechury claiming that on the one hand, 36 Indian billionaires constituted 25% of India’s GDP while on the other, 70% of Indians had to do with Rs 20 a day. "A farmer commits suicide every 30 minutes. The gap between the two Indias is widening," he said. The growing wealth gap is also a big concern in other BRIC countries such as China and Russia. Fully...