aroonwithaview

Nothing riles up the populace like a good old royal wedding, and if the Ambanis are not the archetype of modern Indian royalty, the term might as well be meaningless. Of course, the vast majority of Indians, even the vast majority of Indians with any access to information on the spectacle, do not care. But those that do seem to care very much, in either direction. I can see why some people enjoy watching the blatant glitz and the ostentatious glamour, but I can see more clearly why others are appalled by the context in which all of it takes place. There is something viscerally wrong with both the amassing and display of such gargantuan wealth by a handful of people in a society where hundreds of millions live miserable lives purely due to a lack of financial means.

In the larger context of Indian wealth making, there’s something even more disturbing in the underbelly of the beast that this wedding brings back into view. That the spoils go to the victors is unquestionably true in all societies. The problem is that in India, and other rapidly developing lower income societies today, the victors rarely include the median person. It is obvious that this is not true in advanced Western societies, where economic development has led to wide social nets, excellent public services, and high levels of access to education and self improvement. But this also seems to be not true in many recently developed countries as well, such as South Korea, where again the spoils from the victories of Samsung, Hyundai etc has raised the median person in almost the same proportion that it raised the richest person. My sense is that this is due to the fact that despite being chaebols, the South Korean giants were still rapidly advancing technology and contributing to enhanced productivity, while Indian chaebols like Reliance and Adani operate as rent extractors rather than surplus creators. When you enlarge the pie, taking a larger bite can still leave a larger bite for the rest. When all you’re doing is beating others to the same pie, you get to fly in Hollywood superstars to your son’s wedding while the rest hunger for a nibble at the pie.