Don’t look at Netflix’s Bad Boy Billionaires for closure. Love-hate relationship will go on
PoV

Don’t look at Netflix’s Bad Boy Billionaires for closure. Love-hate relationship will go on

Indians' worshipped their bad boy billionaires Vijay Mallya, Nirav Modi and Subrata Roy, until their ultra-rich idols ran into legal hurdles.

   
Netflix | Bad Boys Billionaires

Graphic by Soham Sen | ThePrint

Our relationship with big money is complicated. From viewing every Bad Boy Billionaire as evil during the License Raj to blindly worshipping rich people since the 1990s, we have surely come a long way. We still worship them — until the moment they are dragged to court. Then we all turn into hyenas, whether it is ‘Saharasri’ Subrata Roy, Nirav Modi or the king of good times Vijay Mallya. But if you are looking for a vicarious, cathartic fix, Netflix’s new Bad Boy Billionaires: India just won’t do it.

Neither does the show’s tone do justice to its name, nor will its stories transport you to a scandalous world. The hour-long episodes of the docuseries do little more than stitch together news reports. It also features people who are close with or have closely followed the three ‘bad boys’ the show picked: Vijay Mallya, Nirav Modi and Subrata Roy. It is just a collage of paper clippings or TV bytes strung together with some interviews — nothing you haven’t seen before. But it is more voyeurism than pursuit of truth.

Roy, who was arrested in March 2014, spent a couple of years in jail before being released on parole in May 2016. But the time spent in jail and being under the constant watch of his court-appointed security personnel did not contribute to a sense of justice. There were reports that he was given VIP treatment at Tihar Jail.

Vijay Mallya fled and argued in the UK courts that Indian prison conditions were bad. The call for his extradition is still not a mass demand. Basically, Indians don’t quite know what to do with the bad boys.

Since our collective memory can be equated to a goldfish, hopefully the show will serve as a reminder to one and all that billionaires should always be looked at with a certain degree of scepticism. Indeed, the resources they have makes them extremely powerful and influential in political circles, and puts them in a position to exploit our interests.

It’s quite ironic how there’s a deep-seated hatred of the Congress party because some of its leaders were named in alleged scams in the recent past, but skepticism of the ultra-rich, who have time and again been caught in one scandal or another, are often spared our wrath. Involvement of the rich in scams is often treated as a one-off case in public perception, rather than a systemic problem wherein corruption, bribery, and loopholes in law are often deployed by those in power to manipulate public sentiment.

The love for billionaires is widely seen on social media with growing fan pages for the ultra-rich like Mukesh Ambani’s family.  

So now, India mostly just admires the big billionaires. They have become an aspiration, sneakpeeks into their lives are a voyeuristic pleasure.


Also read: Bill Gates to Azim Premji: How billionaires explain their donations


More bad boys 

While Bad Boy Billionaires: India features Vijay Mallya, Subrata Roy and Nirav Modi in the episodes that have been allowed to air, these are the stories of a bunch of ‘has beens’ whose corruption and amorality doesn’t come as a surprise.

It’s a lacklustre series that neither has the tone nor the novelty to be a ‘badass’ show — it’s a compilation of news events at best with the journalists that covered the story recounting it for the world.

Such shows would be more powerful, and indeed more interesting to watch, if they were able to bring content to challenge top bosses who are in power right now, and at the hands of whom millions are suffering even now.

The struggle of Odisha’s 12 villages and Dodria Kondh tribes in the Niyamgiri Hills, where tribals won the verdict against a mining company, could be one.

And why only flamboyant megalomaniacs, shows like Bad Boys Billionaires should also bring into the spotlight the malpractices of Western brands exploiting labour in India. Fast fashion brands can be easily put under scrutiny here.

There are reports that suggest labourers at sweatshops in north India earn less than minimum wage and work longer hours just so we can buy pretty clothes off the rack. Are Indian fast-fashion brands benefiting from such set-ups?


Also read: Mukesh Ambani’s online cult is growing. Everyone loves a desi, patriotic, sanskari billionaire


We all want to identify as rich 

Since most of us desire to be in the upper, creamy class and imagine ourselves to be in the rich person’s shoes, we start identifying with them, we want to be them. And so, we start filtering out the basic problems in their persona and the estate they have created.

This can be seen in the way our cinema has evolved over the years. During the 1950s and ’70s, films portrayed class and caste struggle, at times mirroring the ordinary people. Amitabh Bachchan’s ‘angry young man’ from Zanjeer was also the story of a man against the system. Today, though there are films on social issues, mainstream cinema largely has its lens on worldly or overly glamorous characters, belonging to a certain class and income group, which most of us find desirable. The poor have disappeared from most Bollywood movies.

Stop idol-worshipping the rich

We tend to idolise the rich for their ‘hard work’, and view token philanthropy by them in a positive light, when most, especially in India, don’t even donate a fraction of their wealth to the society.

To put into perspective just how frugal India’s billionaires are when it comes to giving back to the society — Azim Premji alone accounts for 80 per cent of large contributions (more than Rs 10 crore) made by individuals since 2014.

Why should someone donate their ‘hard-earned money’, you ask? The answer is simple: they take too much from society and don’t return it. This isn’t some socialist idea, it’s a principle written in business books, but the rich take disproportionately more than they return, which is why proportionate taxing is only fair.

While a large number of Indians have been struggling to come out of poverty, the number of billionaires has risen from 9 to 101 since 2009. This isn’t an indicator of growth, but evidence that the society overwhelmingly favours the rich. In the words of US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a system that allows billionaires to exist alongside extreme poverty is immoral.

Hoping Indians start questioning the way billionaires operate in the country, and the next time a Richie Rich is caught committing fraud, he/she gets exactly what they deserve, instead of living luxurious lives in London or getting VIP treatment at Tihar Jail.

It’s time to put new India’s Saharasris under tougher lens than Netflix shows.

Views are personal.

Disclosure: Azim Premji is among the distinguished investors of ThePrint. Please click here for details on investors.