Practically nobody outside the Delhi Gymkhana Club will shed tears for the Narendra Modi government’s sudden eviction notice on ‘security’ grounds. The exclusive 113-year-old club sits on 27 acres of prime land in central Delhi, its membership is dominated by former bureaucrats and retired military brass — the so-called Lutyens elite.
But what’s actually rich is the rhetoric. TV channels owned by billionaires Gautam Adani, Mukesh Ambani and Subhash Chandra are discovering their inner social-justice warriors, railing against the cheap gin-and-tonics being swilled in the Gymkhana Club.
Like right-wing populists around the world, the Modi dispensation pretends to take on the elite, yet it has facilitated the greatest concentration of political and economic power in Indian history. Its cronies have been effectively ‘gifted’ thousands of crores in capital subsidies, tax breaks and precious forest land, while the majority of India grapples with price rises, joblessness, and record household debt. To cover it all up, sometime you need easy targets.
The facts are well known, not that a section of the Indian media wants you to look at them.
- There has been an unprecedented concentration of economic power across sectors, with the non-financial assets’ share of the biggest five conglomerates rising from 10 per cent in 1991 to 18 per cent in 2021. Former RBI deputy governor Viral Acharya has shown that this concentration also stokes inflation as larger monopolies wield both pricing power and the influence to lobby for higher import duties.
- Workers are suffering: real monthly wages for self-employed and salaried workers in 2023-24 were lower than in 2017-18, according to the government’s own figures. Real wages for agricultural labour grew an average 6.8 per cent under the UPA and -1.3% — yes, that’s a minus sign — under the Modi government.
- The result? India’s “Billionaire Raj” is today more unequal than the British Raj: the top 1 per cent earn 23.1 per cent of income and own 40.1 per cent of all wealth.
India has always been an unequal society. Though after Independence, there was an attempt to direct it towards greater justice even under liberalising governments. The Modi government, however, has simply waged a class war in the other direction, on behalf of its billionaire friends and financiers.
It dished out a massive corporate tax cut in 2019, which cost the exchequer Rs 1.45 lakh crore annually and disproportionately benefited the top 0.7 per cent of all companies. It also allocated another Rs 1.97 lakh crore for mostly capital-intensive companies under the 2021 Production-Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme. The result? The tax benefit went into dividends and paying off loans, while private investment remains stagnant at 12 per cent of GDP. The rich have jetted off to London, Dubai and Singapore, and now their money is following, taking the value of the rupee down with it.
The government bulldozed through amendments to redefine forests so as to open up 1.97 lakh square km to ‘development’ in 2023. It tried to redefine the Aravalli hills – a 670-km range in northwestern India that acts as a natural barrier against desertification, heat and groundwater loss – to facilitate more ‘development’ (read: rampant mining). The Supreme Court stepped in to stay both, but this hasn’t ended the Modi government’s seeming determination to reduce citizens’ quality and duration of life.
Also read: Skip the lies about Delhi Gymkhana Club being a secret power centre and answer 5 questions
BJP and BFF billionaries
The term “pro-rich” doesn’t capture Modi’s style; he’s only for the richest of the rich. Recall the use of India’s premier investigative agencies to enrich his friends. It’s no secret how promoter after promoter has ended up divesting valuable assets in sectors like ports, airports and cement to the Adani Group after being raided by the Enforcement Directorate (ED), Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and Income Tax department, which led Gautam Adani to briefly be the world’s second-richest man.
The same agencies seem to have been used to extract political funding from companies. Before the Supreme Court ruled electoral bonds as illegal, the BJP received Rs 2,471 crore in political funding from companies being investigated by the ED, CBI and Income Tax – of which 69 per cent was extracted after raids on those companies. The bottom line: the BJP received Rs 5,717 crore in donations from business houses in 2024-25, more than 13 times what all other national parties received.
Maximum extraction, maximum concentration seems to be the goal. Everyone is a victim, the only beneficiaries are the BJP and its BFF billionaires. How can you expect companies to innovate and be competitive when the path to success runs through the BJP’s coffers?
This cannot and will not continue forever. As Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi has written, the number of “play fair” firms far exceeds the number of “match fixing” monopolies, whether it is the large number of startups or established homegrown companies that just want to go about their business. The damage being done to India’s business environment is grave, and likely to get worse before it gets better.
But when this government falls, much repair work will be needed to bring about a more just and dynamic society. Until then, the assault on our resources and our pockets will continue unabated, with periodic distractions in the form of symbolic strikes on irrelevant islands of privilege like the Delhi Gymkhana Club.
Amitabh Dubey is a Congress member. He tweets @dubeyamitabh. Views are personal.
(Edited by Prashant Dixit)