> Isn't the comparison of interest between India and China -- which
> perhaps makes the reference to global capitalist economy a bit
> murky.
> By FDI, exports, etc., China is more closely integrated into the
> global economy, but hardly figures in the list.
China's gini coefficient is worse than India and Brazil's worse than China.Billionaires list is not a reliable estimate of the degree of inequality in respective economies. I am also not sure how these ranks are compiled and how reilable are these numbers.
> OTOH, quite a few of the Indian billionaires are old money and
> inherited wealth -- Mittal, Ambani
Laxmi Mittal and Ambanis have emerged as large businesses in last 25 years. They don't represent inherited wealth. Mittal's empire, AFAIK, as largely outside India and therefore has little to do with domestic Indian economy. Mittal migrated to Indonesia in 1970s and built his business in Indonesia over 20 years.
>Birla, Godrej, Mistry, Agarwal
Big business is essentially an international affair.e.g. Birla's have substantial interests in South East Asia. It would obviously be inappropriate to consider their global wealth and compare it with India's GDP. In fact, the comparison of _wealth_with _per capita income_made in the new report is fallacious.
> So, part of it is India's own history as a capitalist economy and
> its
> own massive class divisions -- whacked in China by the revolution -
> -
> and part of it is the "reforms" -- privatisation helping push up
> the
> fortunes of the old rich
There has been very little _privatisation_ of Indian state enterprises. These enterprises have been listed on the stock exchanges, but Indian state retains mamagement control and majority share holdings in state enterprises. In major sectors such as railways, steel and coal mining, banking and insurance, airlines, telecom, petroleum exploration, refining and marketing, shipping, defense industries etc., enterprises wholly managed by the state and owned (wholly or partly)by it enjoy a dominant positions.
Ulhas