The Billionaire Raj by James Crabtree
Oneworld 384pp £18.99 The Week Bookshop £14.99
India’s fast-growing band of billionaires are a gold mine for writers, said Melissa van der Klugt in The Times. No one can resist the “juicy” descriptions of “Bollygarch” excess: golden helicopter seat belts; flunkies proffering mobile phones on silver platters; a “170-metre-high skyscraper-home in Mumbai with almost the same floor space as the Palace of Versailles”. Equally sensational are the figures about their wealth: at least one new billionaire created every month since 2010; more, now, in total (119) than “any other country bar America, China and Russia”. In this “highly readable” exploration of the topic, James Crabtree profiles the most colourful of these newly minted magnates, including Vijay Mallya, the party-loving former drinks tycoon now on the run in London over alleged financial crimes, and “India’s Warren Buffett”, Rakesh Jhunjhunwala. Yet he also examines why the country suddenly has so many of them – and “what this billionaire raj means for the future of India”.
The new super-rich class emerged during the “long boom of globalisation” that began in 1991, said Meghnad Desai in the FT. That year, after “four decades of conservative socialism”, India cut tariffs, devalued the rupee and removed import licensing. Before long, a “cronycapitalist relationship” had developed: industry titans secretly bankrolled politicians’ astronomically expensive election campaigns – the 2014 ballot cost $5bn alone – in exchange for them greasing the wheels of bureaucracy. And this arrangement initially helped boost the economy, said The Economist. Between 2004 and 2010, “India had the fastest growth spurt in living memory, with GDP rising at close to double-digit rates”. But the rise of the plutocrats angered voters, and in 2014 the current prime minister, Narendra Modi, won office promising to clean up politics. Crabtree, formerly the FT’S man in Mumbai, thinks that such a clean-up is possible – but suspects that Modi is “too cautious” to make it happen.
The problem with The Billionaire Raj, said Jonathan Knee in The New York Times, is that it doesn’t deliver a “comprehensive portrait” of India’s ten-figure elites. Sure, the “Trump-like moguls” make for good copy. But what’s lacking is information about the “more mainstream” plutocrats who actually pull the strings. Ultimately, said Melissa van der Klugt, only time will tell whether India’s “kickback culture” will survive efforts to stamp out “cronyism”. But this “highly readable” book will certainly “fill a hole as we watch and wait”.
The Prisoner Played at the Edinburgh Festival; National Theatre, London SE1 (020-7452 3000). 12 September to 4 October
Every moment of this parable of punishment and oppression, co-written and co-directed by Peter Brook, reflects his “theatrical gifts: complete concentration, intense visualisation, meditative seriousness”. Alas, it’s “beautiful but inert” (Guardian).