Even as India’s frontline businessmen and new genre entrepreneurs are working overtime to revive the economy after the Covid-19 disruption, the country’s Left politicians and fellow travellers in the academy continue to vent their ire — especially on social media — against business leaders taking big risks to kick-start the sputtering economy and make good the loss of momentum during the pandemic months. A recent publication of the US-based Forbes magazine’s list of the world’s dollar-billionaires — among whom Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani have improved their rankings — has provided anti-success arm-chair lefties renewed enthusiasm to allege rampant crony capitalism.
According to the latest Forbes list of richest Indians, Ambani’s wealth is estimated at $92.6 billion followed by Adani at $75 billion. Oxfam International, a breeding ground of armchair lefties, rightly laments that 10 percent of India’s rich control 77 percent of national wealth, a circumstance it attributes to “crony capitalism and inheritance”. Yet the plain truth is that the 2As and their forbears ventured into industries where public sector enterprises, much loved by lefties, proved to be miserable failures after draining away billions of taxpayers’ money.
A fundamental canon of economics is that entrepreneurs and businessmen become wealthy only if they provide goods and services that society needs. In a world where bankrupt communist ideology has been universally rejected, lefties don’t seem to be aware that after substantial liberalisation and deregulation of the dirigiste Indian economy in 1991, the 2As are competing with the largest corporations worldwide on level playing fields.
The panacea for rising income inequality dear comrades, is not to pull the rich down from their seats, but to raise up the masses through QEFA (quality education for all). Pity the lamenting lefties can’t grasp this elementary proposition continuously propagated by your editors for over 20 years.
