The Union Minister Kapil Sibbal told a TV news channel the other day that the GDP growth
witnessed during the 10 years of UPA rule was never seen before. No wonder the
government has unleashed a
barrage of adverts showing the UPA version of “India
Shining”. Many will take the statement of Sibbal with fistfuls of salt. At the
same time, looked at from another angle it would seem largely true. If one
cannot quite lump it one might just read on and look at the kind of growth the
country has had.
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| Mumbai high-rises |
Arguably, Mumbai
is the richest city in India. It has been so for most of the post-independence
years. But, the kind of riches its citizens flaunt today was unheard of
earlier. Take for instance a recent screaming headline in a national daily.
Mumbai, literally, is going to have “castles in the air”. Ten such “castles” of
18000 square feet each are coming up in an ultra high-end apartment complex
costing a cool hundred crore, i.e. a hundred million rupees (around 60 million
dollars). The complexes come with dog parks, crèche, an elevated jogging track
and other thoughtful amenities.
The
“uber-luxury” apartments have their own restricted clientele who never seem to
have heard the term “slow-down”. Duplex apartments in such complexes come with
private pools, sundecks, multi-level automated parking and five-star clubs and can cost as much as Rs. 1 lakh (a hundred
thousand rupees) a square feet (about 100 crores for 10,000 square feet). Sold
only by invitation, five Signet residences on the 40th floor of
Lodha’s World Tower received overwhelming response and were lapped up for Rs.
75,000 per square feet. Located in Worli it is touted as the world’s tallest
residential tower at 442 metres. It boasts of interiors by Armani and a club
and a spa by Six Senses among other high-end labels.
Readers will
recall a recent controversy over the plan to build super luxury apartments
within peeping distance of the President’s House. The project proponent seems
to be so powerful as to have had the objections of the security agencies
brushed aside. The proposal continues to be alive and it would be interesting
to see what eventually transpires.
Residences
costing scores of crores are no big deal in Mumbai. Antilia, the house of
tycoon Mukesh Ambani, cost him $2 billion, I suppose, more than 10000 crores in
Indian money, making it the costliest house in the world. Not to be terribly
outdone, his younger brother Anil built a slightly less costly one in Rs. 4000
crores. There
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| Ambani's $20 billion house |
are smaller fries like Amitabh Bachchan, senior thespian of
Bollywood, who bought a new bungalow for Rs 50 crores (5 billion rupees) despite
having four of them already and Sachin Tendulkar, the legendary cricketer, is
going to move into his new Rs. 80 crore (8 billion rupees) house. Paying 10 or
20 crores for a 3 or 4 bedroom houses seems like spending loose change.
Bangalore too boasts of such properties that cost multi-crore and claim a pool
or a garden in front of every bedroom. Even 3 and 4 tier towns have high-end
properties that are worth several crores. People like us, the retired civil
servants, cannot conceive of the way such properties are sold and bought.
The country has
emerged as the biggest market for business jets in Asia-Pacific region. It has
surpassed far richer China as a number of business houses and high net-worth
individuals (HNIs) have started acquiring aircraft. According to Beechcraft, a
leading manufacturer of business aircraft, India has a fleet of 254 business
aircraft against 213 in China, 192 in Japan, 150 in Hong Kong, 66 in Malaysia and
only 53 in Thailand – all supposedly richer than it. A report says that even during the slow-down
years of 2008-12 Indians purchased 38% more aircraft than in the preceding five
years. Experts in the field of business aircraft are bullish about India. They
expect a steep rise in the number of HNIs as surveys have indicated that the
Indian economy is going to grow “significantly” in the next five years.
Beechcraft, therefore, considers India as a very “exciting market” for business
aviation and has committed significant investments for registering its presence
in the country.
Another recent
complementary report said that the number of indigenous billionaires (in dollar
terms) is set to double during the next ten years. With 60 billionaires already
in the country it ranks sixth among top ten countries. By 2023 the number is
expected to rise to 119 according to the Wealth Report of Knight Frank who runs
a global consultancy firm. With the global rise in the numbers of ultra-wealthy
in 2023 only three countries, USA, Russia and China will have more billionaires
than India. That’s saying quite a lot for the country’s business acumen.
Earlier during
the pre-independence years we knew of maharajas maintaining huge garages for
stabling their car collections. Maharaja of Gwalior (the grand-father of the Central
minister Jyotiraditya Scindia) was called the Prince of Mercedes owning as many
as 75 of them apart from assorted Rolls Royces, Bentleys,
Cadillacs, Packards
and sundry high-end European cars like Alfa Romeos and Hispano Suizas. Today,
leave alone the business/industry tycoons, even film stars maintain a handsome
stable of cars. Amitabh Bachchan has many among which is a multi-crore Rolls
Royce and he gifts his son a 2-crore Bentley without batting an eye-lid. An
up-and-coming actress acquired a bespoke Rolls Royce. The legendary cricketers
like Tendulkar and MS Dhoni, likewise, own fleets of luxury cars, Dhoni even
having a battery of high-end exotic motorbikes.
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| A Rolls Royece car |
With money
flowing in with Sibbal’s growth, the rich are now graduating to luxury yachts.
The earliest owners were Vijay Mallya, Gautam Singhania and Anil Ambani. They
are now not the only ones; every fat cat wants one and now the country has
around150 of them crowding the sea off the Gateway of India. The itch is fast
progressing southwards to Goa and Kerala.
All this does
not take into account the cash illegally stashed away abroad. Estimates vary
about the amount but the Central Bureau of investigations once submitted before
the Supreme Court that Indian are estimated to have about $500 billion in banks
abroad. That was in 2011. It may well be well above that figure now with all
those enterprising people having made far more money in the interregnum. The
government has put the lid on the cashe of information so firmly that none has
been able to pry it open. After all, its own big guns and other politicians are
all reported to be guilty of sneaking away money to foreign lands. One can,
however, gauge the ill-gotten riches of Indians by the inestimable wealth of
the Hindu temples. An erstwhile mining magnate of Karnataka had made an
offering of gold and diamond coronet to his deity in a Southern temple costing
around 2.5 billion rupees.
Down below, the
middle classes are also doing not too badly. There is a housing boom with
luxury apartments in gated complexes coming up all over the country. A hundred
thousand today is meaningless money. You have to have in several multiples of
it to be able to get going in kind of a middling life. Mercedes, Audis and
Range Rovers are in profusion and so are Hondas that clog the lanes and
by-lanes with houses unable to accommodate multiple sedans. Tata’s compact car Nanos are a no-no and Maruti Suzuki 800 has become extinct.
http://bagchiblog.blogspot.com
Sibbal is,
therefore, right! There has been unprecedented growth during these ten years not
in the economy but for the tycoons and, of course, politicians many of whom
have become crorepaties (billionaires). That the economic growth has dived into
the pits, foreign investment is conspicuous by its absence – even the Indian
investors have migrated abroad, manufacturing is scraping the bottom with job
creation virtually zero and the persistent high retail inflation – all that and
many more, taken together is another story. For Sibbal growth has taken place
in right quarters. As for the poor, they can wait; years and years of
democratic India is ahead of them to play the catch-up game. Where is the
hurry?
All photos are from the Internet
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