J. Crabtree, "Billionaire India" Summary and Impressions - India's version of Oligarchs! A book to learn about the reality of India's corrupt, cronyism, and ultra-universal society!
I would like to introduce "Billionaire India: The Light and Shadow of a Society Ruled by Millionaires," written by James Crabtree and translated by Ryohei Kasai, published by Hakusuisha in 2020.
Let's take a quick look at the book.
The Structure of Prosperity and Corruption as Revealed by the Ecology of the Super Riches
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The cozy relationship between government and business, the pervasive cronyism, and money politics extending to local politics - this is a masterpiece that portrays various aspects of Indian society through the lives of the super rich.
This nonfiction book is a fascinating and sometimes graphic portrait of India's economy, politics, and society, delving deeply into the realities of the super-rich who have emerged as a result of the country's rapid growth since economic liberalization. The book is not a mere "biography of the rich and powerful," though it features a number of billionaires who have achieved success in various fields of business, including Mukesh Ambani, India's richest man with an astounding personal fortune of $38 billion. The film exposes the deeply rooted structure of corruption in Indian society through the negative aspects that lie behind the success stories, such as the collusion between government and business, the pervasive cronyism, and the corrupt nature that undermines local politics and sports.
The author, a former journalist for the Financial Times, juxtaposes the "Gilded Age" of the late 19th century in the U.S. with the present-day India, and asks whether India will be able to move into such an "age of innovation" in the near future, as the U.S. has since undergone changes such as greater political transparency and the expansion of the middle class. Will India be able to move into such an "age of innovativism" in the near future?
The book is highly suggestive and worthwhile in considering various issues facing the world today, such as the merits and demerits of the global economy, economic development and politics in emerging economies, and the disparity between the rich and the poor.
India, a fast-growing economic superpower, will overtake China's population by 2023. Where is India headed for the future under the leadership of Prime Minister Modi? This book is a good way to learn about modern India, which has now become a huge influence on the world.
As the title of the book, "Billionaire India: Lights and Shadows of a Society Ruled by Millionaires," suggests, this book looks at India with the main theme of the super-rich in India.
The translator's afterword at the end of the book states
This is a solid nonfiction book that tackles the enormous and formidable subject of contemporary India, with a focus on "billionaires" or "millionaires. The author, James Crabtree, was assigned to India in 1999 as the Mumbai bureau chief of the Financial Times (just in time for me), and covered the turbulent country for about five years until 2004. He would take private jets to talk to young tycoon businessmen, or he would visit the local branch of the BJP to see how its supporters were enjoying their big election victory. On one occasion, he flew to London to listen to a wealthy merchant who was virtually on the run, and on another occasion, he went to a small town in Uttar Pradesh to ask people about the state of corruption in their neighborhoods. Based on these interviews, the film examines the rise and fall of the wealthy and how they have built their relationship with politics, the corruption that undermines India - even in the national sport of cricket - and the news media's growing incendiary tendencies. and the news media's growing incendiary tendencies. This is Crabtree's first book, and I was impressed by his ability to convey the atmosphere on the ground without losing his calmness and objectivity, and to unravel the intricacies of the story in a straightforward manner.
Hakusuisha, James Crabtree, translated by Ryohei Kasai, Billionaire India: Light and Shadow of a Society Ruled by Millionaires, p. 444
The first thing that surprises me when I read this book is how wealthy the Indian millionaires are. The super-rich are being born one after another in India, who are ranked at the top of the world's richest people.
This is Antilia, the home of millionaire Mukesh Ambani, who appears at the beginning of this book. This building, which also appears on the cover of this book, is said to be the most exclusive private residence in the world. Perhaps you may be thinking, "Aren't there many buildings of this size in the world?" You might think, "Aren't there many buildings like this in the world? But no. This building is not just a part of his house, but the building itself is his private residence. This is the reason why Ambani is so incredibly wealthy.
The author describes this antillia as follows.
Antilia, a high-rise built by Mukesh Ambani for himself, his wife, and their three children. Nothing could more clearly symbolize the power of India's new elite class than this building. The 160-meter-high steel and glass tower occupies an area of only about 1,200 square meters, but its total floor space is roughly two-thirds the size of the Palace of Versailles. The ground floor is occupied by a large hall similar to that of a hotel, with a number of foreign-made chandeliers weighing a total of 25 tons, which are well matched to the building. Six parking floors are reserved for the family's collection of cars, while a staff of several hundred is on hand to meet the various needs of the family. On the upper floors, luxurious living spaces and hanging gardens are the main attractions. The reception room on the top floor has glass walls on three sides and opens onto a spacious outdoor terrace overlooking the city of Mumbai. Downstairs is a sports club with a gym and yoga studio. The "ice room," which is like a reverse version of a sauna, provides an escape from Mumbai's intense summer heat. A short walk downstairs to the second basement level is the recreation floor for the Ambani children, where there is a soccer field and even a basketball court.
Over the years, Mumbai has remained a divided city. It is a high-density megacity, with residential neighborhoods for business tycoons and investors, and shacks with tin or plastic sheeting as roofs standing right next to them. Antillia seems only to amplify this divide - Mumbai is known for its extremes of wealth and poverty, but the towering buildings themselves are even morelevelIt is as if they are creating a
Hakusuisha, James Crabtree, translated by Ryohei Kasai, "Billionaire India: Light and Shadow of a Society Ruled by Millionaires," p. 19-20
What do you think? I hope you have gotten a sense of the awesomeness of Antillia from reading this.
Now in India, these super-rich people are emerging in increasing numbers. They have overwhelming wealth, but on the other hand, the problem of inequality, as preached above, is shaking India.
India has always been known for its great disparity, but here the disparity has become even more extreme. This has become a source of concern for modern India.
This book is a good way to see how such super-rich people were born. And as mentioned in the introduction of the book, the main reason was the reality that we would like to turn away from: collusion with the political and business world, nepotism, corruption, bribery, and other forms of injustice.
In this book, we refer to the super-rich who were created in this way as Boligarchs. This term was coined from the "oligarchs," a newly emerging Russian conglomerate. The term "Boligarhi" is used here in the same way that Indian movies are often called "Bollywood," a play on the word "Hollywood.
Speaking of "oligarchs," I've mentioned them before in this blog, written by M. I. Goldman.The Russian Economy Robbed."It is explained in detail in the following section. Oligarchs refer to emerging conglomerates that took advantage of the hasty shift to a market economy after the collapse of the Soviet Union to monopolize state property, the media, and some of the world's largest natural resources, amassing enormous fortunes. These oligarchs and oligarchs have something in common. They share the same characteristics as described above: collusion with the political and business world, cronyism, corruption, and bribery. The Russian oligarchs became well known to the world with the recent invasion of Ukraine, but now we know that the same thing was happening here in India.
Since we are here, we would like to introduce you to a section that talks about Russian oligarchs in an easy-to-understand manner. It will also be helpful in reading the current work, "Billionaire India: Light and Shadow of a Society Ruled by Millionaires," so I will read it carefully, although it will be a bit long.
Imagine this for a moment. -Every business in Japan has been owned and managed by the Japanese government for 70 years. Then all of a sudden, the Prime Minister and the Diet decide (I wish Japan were that lucky.) They decide to move everything from state ownership to private ownership, including, of course, the country's vast array of crude oil wells, natural gas fields, iron mines, and nonferrous metal mines.
The Japanese people as a whole have come to own these assets. Therefore, it is only logical that each citizen should receive a share in the sale of national property, regardless of the amount of the sale price....
Keep imagining further. What will be the reaction when it turns out that this will not be the case and only a very few people will be the new owners?
We shall call them oligarchs. Oligarchs are a group of oligarchs (oligarchs and oligopolistic capitalists) who became wealthy through the acquisition of power and interests, and are the poster children of Yeltsin Russia. Oligarchies as an organization are oligarchs, and oligarchs as a plurality are oligarchs. Both are often referred to as "emerging zaibatsu" in Japan. Before privatization began, not a few of them were doing business on the black market, gaining notoriety for their shady dealings.
But there is something more disturbing than that. Seventeen of these oligarchs, who until a mere 15 years ago possessed nothing that could be called a fortune, suddenly appear together on the annual list of the world's billionaires published by Forbes magazine. At the same time, something else is going on. While this group is getting richer by the day, one-third of the Japanese population is living below the poverty line overnight. In other words, what had been a relatively equal society (or perhaps I should say not equally rich) will become a country with a few billionaires surrounded by a disproportionately large number of very poor people.
In addition to this, these newly emerging oligarchs will do little or nothing to demonstrate a bit of entrepreneurial spirit and become very wealthy. They are neither investors nor do they add value through their activities. They acquire their wealth by extorting ownership.
The techniques they use include deception, violence, and more often than not, bribes, and itchy back scratching with politicians (I did you a favor last time, now it's your turn to do me a favor). Now it's your turn to do it for you. In this relatively new environment, where a few people are actually rich and many are actually poor, it is inevitable that feelings of deep resentment and bitterness will accumulate over the whole process. (omitted).
The Russian public was relatively passive in the face of the immensity of the oligarchs' prey, the "stolen goods" that they were taking from the state property that had been decided to be privatized.
The Russian people have suffered hardships since time immemorial. Their history is full of examples of how the people have endured injustice without rebellion.
However, despite their seeming passivity, the average Russian today cannot help but be disturbed and unsettled by the way the privatization process has been designed and implemented.
This is reflected in the polls, with as many as 701 TP3T (and sometimes as many as 901 TP3T) in favor of restoring the results and reworking the privatization process. This number is not surprising. This figure is not surprising, especially since the privatization of Russia's higher-value assets has been the subject of rumors of fraud, murder, and a host of other irregularities and corruption.
Nor did they benefit from the media coverage of the oligarchs' newly acquired mansions, private jets, and girlfriends who would win a beauty pageant.
It must have been even more galling to hear that he had exported Russia's natural resources to foreign countries, taken the money he had accumulated and used it to flee abroad, and then used it to buy a soccer team in London with $200 million. Most Russians would have thought, "Why don't you put that money in Russia and use it to strengthen the Russian soccer team? That's what most Russians thought. (On July 7, the Comptroller General began criticizing Roman Abramovich, one of the young oligarchs who acquired the popular English Premier League team Chelsea FC, for using tax evasion from his oil company to finance the acquisition. [omitted)
What follows is an explanation of how the reformers in the Yeltsin administration came to make the choices they did, and how that group of oligarchs, especially those who were far outside the periphery of power during the Soviet era, became so wealthy so quickly, This is a bit of an in-depth explanation of how the oligarchs, especially those who were far outside the periphery of power during the Soviet era, became so wealthy so quickly. The Japanese are one of our neighbors and future investors interested in accessing Russia's rich natural resources. This book is a particularly important story for them.
Japan Broadcast Publishing Association, Marshall I. Goldman, translated by Hironobu Suzuki, The Robbed Russian Economy, p. 7-18.
Some line breaks have been made.
You have summarized very clearly what was happening in the Russian economic world after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It shows how Russia's economic situation is based on a logic that is different from our common sense. There are many super-rich people in India who have risen in a similar way to Russia, and Antilia is a symbol of this.
When I read "Billionaire India: The Light and Shadow of a Society Ruled by Millionaires," I was filled with a sense of lamentation that such corruption and corruption are not limited to Russia but are found all over the world. Of course, I knew that this kind of structure exists not only in Russia but also in other Western industrialized countries. In particular, I read the book by J. Montague, which I introduced earlier.The Billionaires Soccer Club.I was shocked to learn that such practices were rampant even in the sports industries of Western industrialized countries.
When I read "Billionaire India: The Light and Shadow of a Society Ruled by Millionaires," I found myself thinking both "Oh, so it is the same here..." and "Still, isn't this too bad in India?" I felt both "Oh, so it's the same here, too..." and "But still, isn't this too much in India?
The corruption in India described in this book is horrendous. We are told in the media and in many other places that "India will lead the world in the future," but I doubt that it will be that simple. We have no idea how India's development will turn out. It is a matter of darkness. It is hard to imagine what will happen to this chaotic country.
What about Japan, where we live? Are there people like those in Russia and India who have gained enormous wealth through fraud, corruption, and nepotism? Are there no people who are profiting from their own interests?
Ah...I can't help but think back to last year's Olympics. After all, without a thorough review of the Tokyo Olympics, they are now gleefully trying to invite the Sapporo Olympics. As a Hokkaido-area citizen, I am saddened by this.
Are Russia and India on the other side of the river? Are we not facing a terrible situation? Is not the reality of overwhelming disparity already upon us?
It's still better than Russia or India."
Can we really afford to say such things? I am afraid.
This book is a work that makes us think about our current situation in Japan through such realities in India.
This is a work I would highly, highly recommend. Why don't you pick it up?
The above is "J. Crabtree, "Billionaire India" - India's version of oligarchs! A book to learn about India's corrupt, cronyist, and ultra-universal society!" The book is a great way to learn about India's corrupt and nepotistic society!
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