An optimistic note

M. R. Dua

James Crabtree The book under review honestly concentrates on how and why India’s current politico-economic interface is at its utmost crucial threshold. James Crabtree, the author, cogently argues how Indian industrialists are bravely battling complex politico-economic bottlenecks exploring newer horizons to make more money.
Crabtree, India correspondent of London’s The Financial Times, has admirably told the ‘Billionaire Tales’ in the book. Beginning with the Bombaybased Dhirubhai Ambani family’s ‘India’s most celebrated rags-to-riches story’, and its legendary, Reliance Industries, Crabtree doesn’t write in similar tone and tenor about others, such as Vijay Mallya, owner of Kingfisher Airlines and Brewery, Ruias owners of Essar, Gautam Adani of mining and ports enterprises, Naveen Jindal, and Lakshmi Mittal, iron and steel magnets or the 15-billion-pound worth London-based Hinduja brothers.
Crabtree goes ga-ga about the Ambani family, acclaiming the its multifarious achievements. He writes: Mukesh’s ‘plans hinted at the grandeur of his (father’s) ambition, not simply to run his father’s business but to seize his mantle as the nation’s pre-eminent tycoon as well.’
‘Billionaire Raj’ is undoubtedly an ‘unputdownable’ hair-raising narrative of India’s many noble and ‘ignoble’ billionaires and pliable politicians. They’re incidentally currently making sensational news on the front pages of newspapers and breaking news in electronic media.
Crabtree writes how in the past, ‘babus, ’so craftily interpreted the ‘License and Quota Raj’ rules to assist and abet the industrialists’ loots and pocketed hefty bribes.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is confronted with a Himalayan task of ridding millions and millions of people of their obsequious poverty, inequalities, tattered economy on all fronts. Crabtree finds Modi ‘hoping to meet the aspirations of his vast youthful people’ by ‘rapid economic transition’. Though he could not meet their aspirations in full in his first term, he’s struggling to do that in his new second term.
Crab ends with a optimistic note saying: India is faced with difficult choice of battling with ‘sky-high corruption’ and promise of a ‘rocketing growth’. He sees distinct signs of India ‘blossoming into a progressive era of its own, in which the perils of inequality and crony capitalism will be left decisively behind.’

‘Billionaire Raj’ is undoubtedly an ‘unputdownable’ hairraising narrative of India’s many noble and ‘ignoble’ billionaires and pliable politicians. They’re incidentally making sensational news on the frontpages of newspapers and breaking news in electronic media.