Ever wonder why communist parties and Marxist ideology which have long since been consigned to dustbins worldover — Russia and China included — are thriving in India and morphing into the more virulent strain of Naxalism? Because India’s capitalists are making it easier for them by giving the alternative ideology of capitalism a bad name and reputation.
Take for instance Mukesh Ambani, chairman of Reliance Industries (aggregate revenue: Rs.223,216 crore in fiscal 2009-2010), and the world’s richest Indian with a net worth calculated by Forbes magazine at $27 billion (Rs.121,500 crore). Instead of learning from the philanthropic impulses of American billionaires Bill Gates and Warren Buffet among others who have pledged half of their wealth ($53 billion and $47 billion respectively), to charitable causes, this benighted worthy is drawing up a guest-list for his housewarming party on October 28 after he moves into Antilla, reportedly the world’s most expensive single-family residence, sited on Mumbai’s tony Altamount Road.
Among the features of this super deluxe 27-storey residence serviced by nine elevators: three helipads, a swimming pool, health club, a fully-equipped grooming salon, ballroom, multiplex-style theatre and 160 car parking slots spread over the first six floors. This oasis of uber luxury in a country in which according to a committee chaired by the late Arjun Sengupta (who passed away in September), 800 million Indians get by on Rs.20 per day and 46 percent of children below age five suffer chronic malnutrition.
Unfortunately, Ambani-style conspicuous realty consum-ption is proving contagious in a nation where an estimated 80 million families reside in wretched one-room tenements. Right across the country, demand for luxury homes featuring “home theatre lounge, private elevators, Poggenphol kitchens, home office, plunge pools, sundecks and five-star amenities that flaunt affluence” priced at Rs.4,300-25,000 per sq.ft is booming, according to a report in the Times of India (October 13).
In shining India, the major threat to renascent Indian capitalism isn’t as much from communists and Naxals as it is from India Inc’s nouveaux riche capitalists rolling out the red carpet for the Red revolution.
Shameful admission
The political turmoil in the southern state of Karnataka (pop. 57 million), where the BJP government which scraped into power two and a half years ago has barely survived two confidence votes in the state legislative assembly through the dubious stratagem of brazenly bribing MLAs (Rs.25-50 crore each) to cross over, and disqualifying dissident party MLAs under the provisions of the Anti Defection Act, 1985, is accelerating the cancer of corruption through the entire administration of this southern state. Almost imperceptibly, this once model state of clean and orderly governance has transformed, according to the best-selling weekly Outlook (October 25), into India’s most corrupt state.
Consequently, it’s extremely rare for any government paper or document to be issued without payment of bribes and/or speed money. I regret to inform EW readers that your correspondent who prided himself on never having paid a bribe while working as a journalist in Bombay (aka Mumbai) for almost three decades before moving to Bangalore in 1995, is burdened with a guilty conscience for having paid illegal gratification on three occasions — while registering a residential home, obtaining its all-important khata (proof of property tax document) and renewing my driving licence which suffered the fatal infirmity of having been issued in Mumbai. My plea in mitigation is that being pressed for time, the paperwork was outsourced to legal professionals and estate agents who routinely suborn public officials and billed me. Mea culpa!
With the benefit of hindsight, it’s quite clear that the open, uninterrupted and continuous graft that’s become the defining characteristic of this green and pleasant land, is not unconnected with brazen corruption in the legislative assembly where MLAs auction their loyalties. Every bribe taker proffers the excuse that a substantial percentage thereof travels to the very top of the state government where huge sums of money are required to purchase and trade political loyalties. O tempora, O mores!
Colonised benefactors
The handsome donation of $50 million (Rs.225 crore) endowed by Ratan Tata upon Harvard Business School (HBS) — the largest ever contribution made to an education institution in Indian history — has generated dismay within academics and intellectuals back home in India. The dominant strain of opinion within the Indian intelligentsia is that the national interest would have been better served if Tata had disbursed this vast sum to prompt cutting-edge research in Indian universities. Or he could have funded research in the best among the country’s ten IIMs, which are teaching rather than research institutions. Or he could have established a greenfield Tata University to rival Harvard in years to come.
Why are foreign universities and good causes able to loosen the purse strings of indigenous billionaires who can’t spare time of day for domestic charities and causes? For instance the Bangalore School of Music has heroically been trying to raise a paltry sum of Rs.30 lakh for almost a decade in this city awash with tax-exempt IT millionaires, to complete its new auditorium. And the Parikrma Humanity Foundation which runs four exemplary ICSE curriculum English medium schools for slum children entirely free of charge, is obliged to raise most of its funding abroad.
Perhaps the best answer to this puzzling conundrum is provided by Jayati Ghosh, professor of economics at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi (Deccan Chronicle, October 19). According to Ghosh, the generosity of the Indian neo rich towards Western institutions stems from “lack of confidence”. “It is hard to imagine the pioneers of American philanthropy, who created foundations that are now international (like Ford, Rockefeller, MacArthur and so on) spending their money in England rather than the US. So it is not about capitalism in general but the particular Indian variant, which unfortunately still bears the marks of colonised minds in a globalised setting,” writes Ghosh. I couldn’t possibly have put it better.