Indian Prime Minister Modi at the Ambani Wedding in Mumbai - ANI

Ambani Wedding: Billionaires, BJP and Bollywood
By Riaz Haq
CA

 

The last few months have seen a grotesque display of obscene wealth in India, a country with well-documented levels of extreme  poverty ,  hunger  and  unemployment . Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani has splurged hundreds of millions of dollars on his son's wedding attended by top politicians including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Hollywood and Bollywood celebrities, and Ambani's fellow billionaires who have accumulated vast amounts of wealth in one of the world's most unequal countries. 

Between 2014-15 and 2022-23 on Mr Modi's watch, the rapid rise in inequality in India has been particularly striking in terms of wealth concentration, according to  World Inequality Lab . The top 1% now control over 40% of the total wealth in India, up from 12.5% in 1980, and they earn 22.6% of total pre-tax income, up from 7.3% in 1980.  Almost 90% of the country's billionaire wealth is concentrated in the hands of the upper castes. The  Inequality Report  concludes: "This spectacular rise of inequality (in India) makes the “Billionaire Raj” headed by India’s modern bourgeoise more unequal than the British Raj headed by the colonialist forces. It also squarely places India among the most unequal countries in the world". 

Bollywood, the powerful Indian film industry, has become a key enabler of BJP's billionaire-friendly and   Islamophobic policies. In a  piece  titled “India's theatrical politics: Bollywood, billionaires and the BJP", authors Sehr Rushmeen and Wanya Sidhu write: "By shaping narratives that subtly endorse “Hindutva” ideologies, sometimes even employing Muslim actors to deliver skewed messages, Bollywood contributes to a socio-political echo chamber in favor of Modi’s BJP... Bollywood movies transcend mere entertainment; they convey narratives cleverly crafted to align with the BJP’s political agenda. By consistently portraying Muslims and Pakistan in a negative spotlight, these Indian blockbusters perpetuate a cycle of fear and nationalistic fervor to garner votes for the BJP while discarding the imperative of forging national unity".

Meanwhile, India's child-wasting rate of 18.7% is the highest in the world, according to the Global Hunger Index  (GHI) 2023  released last year.  The South Asian country’s child wasting rate is higher than that of war-torn Yemen (at 14.4%) and Sudan (at 13.7%), which are ranked second and third in the world. Pakistan's child wasting rate is 8%.  It represents the share of children under age five who have low weight for their height, reflecting acute undernutrition.  The child wasting rate of the South Asia region is 14.8%, the highest of any world region and more than twice the child wasting rate of Africa. India is home to a quarter of the world's most undernourished people. According to the United Nations, India has nearly 195 million undernourished people. This is more than any other country, including China. 

 

India Tops the World in Child Wasting - Global Hunger Index 2023

 

The government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi wants to project India as a superpower launching  moon missions  and hosting  G20 Summits . Since the GHI 2023 report runs counter to this PR exercise, New Delhi has rejected its findings. But its own National Family Health Survey 5 (NFHS 5)  says  that "Thirty-six percent of children under age five years are stunted; 19 percent are wasted; 32 percent are underweight; and 3 percent are overweight. Children born to mothers with no schooling and children in the lowest wealth quintile are most likely to be undernourished". 

Overall,  India  ranks at 111th position out of 124 countries, with neighboring  Pakistan  (102nd), Bangladesh (81st), Nepal (69th) and Sri Lanka (60th) faring better than India in the index. India has slipped four notches from its 107th position in 2022.

India has slipped four places, from 107 in 2022 to 111 in 2023, on GHI. Pakistan's ranking has also slipped three places, from 99 to 102.  It is not a huge surprise since the country is still facing the aftermath of the disastrous  floods of 2022 . It is also suffering from a serious economic crisis. Meanwhile, India's government is making claims to being the world's fastest-growing economy. And yet, Indian children are the most malnourished in the world.

There's a close relationship between hunger and poverty. At the $3.65 poverty line, India accounts for 40% of the slight upward revision of the global poverty rate from 23.6% to 24.1%, according to the World Bank  September 2023 Global Poverty Update . It is the same update that made the following recent headline in the Indian and Pakistani media about Pakistan: "Pakistan's 40% Population Lives Below Poverty Line, Says World Bank". Fact: 45.9% of Indians and 39.4% of Pakistanis live below the $ 3.65-a-day poverty line as of September 2023, according to the latest World Bank global poverty update that takes into account the impact of inflation on poverty rates. But neither the Pakistani media nor India's compliant "Godi Media" reported it. Nor did they question why poverty in India is growing despite the government's claim to be "the world's fastest-growing economy"

(Riaz Haq is a Silicon Valley-based Pakistani-American analyst and writer. He blogs at  www.riazhaq.com)