The Billionaire Raj

by James Crabtree

  44. “An Unloved Billionaire,” The Economist, August 2, 2014.

  45. Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, p. 82.

  46. “India May Be Challenging Today, but the India of Tomorrow Will Be Fulfilling: Mukesh Ambani,” Financial Express, March 18, 2017.

  Chapter 2: The Good Times Begin

  1. Danny Fortson and Oliver Shah, “Qatari Royals Splash £120m on London Terrace,” Sunday Times, April 28, 2013.

  2. “Fugitive Vijay Mallya’s Extradition Hearing Scheduled for Today in London,” Times of India, June 13, 2017.

  3. Rupert Neate, “Force India F1 Team Boss Vijay Mallya Arrested in London,” The Guardian, April 18, 2017.

  4. “Indian Tycoon Mallya’s Yacht Impounded in Malta Over Wage Dispute,” Reuters, March 7, 2018.

  5. Dilip Bobb, “The King’s Ransom,” Financial Express, October 28, 2012.

  6. Madhurima Nandy and Sharan Poovanna, “Vijay Mallya’s $20 Million ‘Sky Mansion’ in Bengaluru Is Almost Ready. But Will He Get to Live in It?” Livemint, March 20, 2017.

  7. Aliya Ram, “India Charges Ex-Kingfisher Chief Vijay Mallya,” Financial Times, January 25, 2017.

  8. Amy Kazmin and Helen Warrell, “Vijay Mallya Arrested by UK Police,” Financial Times, April 18, 2017.

  9. Suzi Ring, “Vijay Mallya Says ‘Keep Dreaming’ about ‘Billions of Pounds,’ ” Livemint, June 14, 2017.

  10. Amy Kazmin and Naomi Rovnick, “Vijay Mallya Re-Arrested in Money Laundering Case,” Financial Times, October 3, 2017.

  11. “Big Bash for Beer Baron,” Hindustan Times, December 27, 2005.

  12. James Boxell, “Kingfisher Order Gives Welcome Lift to Airbus,” Financial Times, June 16, 2005.

  13. Naazneen Karmali, “Vijay Mallya Drops out of Billionaire Ranks,” Forbes, October 25, 2012.

  14. Simon Briggs, “Vijay Mallya in Race to Become an F1 Force,” The Telegraph, February 8, 2008.

  15. Tom Dalldorf, “Mendocino Brewing’s Owner in Financial Quagmire: Billionaire Vijay Mallya under Siege,” Celebrator, August 2016.

  16. Mihir Dalal and P. R. Sanjai, “How Vijay Mallya Inherited an Empire and Proceeded to Lose It,” Livemint, February 27, 2016.

  17. Maiya, The King of Good Times, Introduction.

  18. Shekhar Gupta, “Vijay Mallya Story Is More about Our Easy Embrace of Cronyism,” Business Standard, March 11, 2016.

  19. Heather Timmons, “Indian Tycoon Spreads His Wings in Aviation,” New York Times, June 21, 2007.

  20. “Vijay Mallya: The Spirit Shall Prevail,” Times of India, April 22, 2002.

  21. “Conflict of Interest? Baron on House Panel on Businessman,” Times of India, March 11, 2016.

  22. Dev Kapur, Milan Vaishnav, and Neelanjan Sircar, “The Importance of Being Middle Class in India,” Milan Vaishnav Files, 2011, p. 4.

  23. Charlie Sorrel, “World’s Lowest Tech Flight Sim in India,” Wired, October 10, 2007.

  24. Tom Peters, “Sir, May I Clean Your Glasses?” tompeters! blog, October 2009.

  25. “India without Gandhi,” The Economist, 1948.

  26. Nehru, Toward Freedom, p. 274.

  27. William Dalrymple, “The Bloody Legacy of Indian Partition,” The New Yorker, June 29, 2015.

  28. Baisya, Winning Strategies for Business, p. 88.

  29. Raghu Karnad, “City in a Bottle,” The Caravan, July 1, 2012.

  30. Srinivasan and Tendulkar, Reintegrating India with the World Economy, p. 16.

  31. James Crabtree, “Game of Thrones with World Chess Champion Vishwanathan Anand,” Financial Times, November 1, 2013.

  32. C. Rangarajan, “1991’s Golden Transaction,” Indian Express, March 28, 2016.

  33. “Secret Sale of Gold by RBI Again,” Indian Express, July 8, 1991.

  34. “July 1991: The Month That Changed India,” Livemint, July 1, 2016.

  35. Saurabh Sinhal, “Vijay Mallya Flew Jet First Class to London with 7 Heavy Bags,” Times of India, March 11, 2016.

  36. “Go Kingfisher,” Siliconeer, April 2006.

  37. Peter Marsh, “Arcelor and Mittal Agree to €27bn Merger,” Financial Times, June 26, 2006.

  38. Joshi, India’s Long Road.

  39. Scheherazade Daneshkhu, “Diageo Sues Vijay Mallya over United Spirits Agreement,” Financial Times, November 17, 2017.

  40. Sankalp Phartiyal, “SEBI bars liquor tycoon Vijay Mallya from capital markets,” Reuters, January 26, 2017.

  41. Ashok Malik, “The Art of Flying on Froth,” Tehelka, October 30, 2012.

  Chapter 3: Rise of the Bollygarchs

  1. Jim Yardley and Vikas Bajaj, “Billionaires’ Rise Aids India, and Vice Versa,” New York Times, July 26, 2011.

  2. Gowda and Sharalaya, “Crony Capitalism and India’s Political System,” p. 140.

  3. James Crabtree, “Gautam Adani, Founder, Adani Group,” Financial Times, June 16, 2013.

  4. Naazneen Karmali, “For the First Time, India’s 100 Richest of 2014 Are All Billionaires,” Forbes, September 24, 2014.

  5. Vinod K. Jose, “The Emperor Uncrowned,” The Caravan, March 1, 2012.

  6. Piyush Mishra and Himanshu Kaushik, “Fleet of 3 Aircraft Ensures Modi Is Home Every Night after Day’s Campaigning,” Times of India, April 22, 2014.

  7. “Adani Ports & SEZ Get Environmental, CRZ Nod for Mundra SEZ,” Adani media release, July 16, 2014.

  8. Rohini Singh, “Rahul Gandhi’s Office Had Requested Jayanthi Natarajan’s Ministry to Look into Adani Port and SEZ,” Economic Times, July 24, 2014.

  9. “Achievements of Ministry of Shipping,” National Informatics Centre, Government of India, 2016, p. 12.

  10. “Ancient Stone Anchor May Offer Clues to Indo-Arabian Maritime Trade,” The National, May 23, 2012.

  11. Das, “India: How a Rich Nation Became Poor and Will Be Rich Again.”

  12. Dhingra, Life Behind the Lobby.

  13. Kerry A. Dolan, “Forbes 2017 Billionaires List: Meet the Richest People on the Planet,” Forbes, March 20, 2017.

  14. Luisa Kroll, “The World’s Billionaires,” Forbes, October 3, 2010.

  15. “India’s 100 Richest Are All Billionaires; Mukesh Ambani Tops List,” Indian Express, September 25, 2014.

  16. Jayant Sinha, “Share Your Billions with Our Billion,” Outlook Business, November 1, 2008.

  17. Ibid.

  18. Bremmer, The Fat Tail, p. 196.

  19. Rajakumar and Henley, “Growth and Persistence of Large Business Groups in India.”

  20. Thomas L. Friedman, “It’s a Flat World, After All,” New York Times, April 3, 2005.

  21. Richard Waters, “Business Pioneers in Technology,” Financial Times, March 31, 2015.

  22. Foreign Affairs, July–August 2006.

  23. James Crabtree, “India’s Billionaires Club,” Financial Times, November 16, 2012.

  24. Raghuram Rajan, “Is There a Threat of Oligarchy in India?” September 10, 2008.

  25. Raghuram Rajan, “What Happened to India?” Project Syndicate, June 8, 2012.

  26. Gandhi and Walton, “Where Do India’s Billionaires Get Their Wealth?”

  27. Michael Walton, “An Indian Gilded Age? Continuity and Change in the Political Economy of India’s Development” (unpublished working paper, January 2017).

  28. Sharma, The Rise and Fall of Nations, ch. 3.

  29. Ruchir Sharma, “Billionaires can be both good and bad. Ruchi Sharma shows how to tell apart.” Scroll.in, June 14, 2016.

  30. Khatri and Ohja, “Indian Economic Philosophy and Crony Capitalism,” p. 63.

  31. Alvaredo et al., “The Top 1 Percent in International and Historical Perspective.”

  32. Freund, Rich People Poor Countries,
p. 3.

  33. Global Wealth Report 2016.

  34. Ibid.

  35. Freund, Rich People Poor Countries, p. 4.

  36. Ibid.

  37. “The Retreat of the Global Company,” The Economist, January 28, 2017.

  38. Jagdish Bhagwati, “This Is How Economic Reforms Have Transformed India,” Hiren Mukerjee Memorial Annual Parliamentary Lecture, December 2, 2010.

  39. Bhagwati and Panagariya, Why Growth Matters, pp. 44–55.

  40. Jagdish Bhagwati, “Scaling Up the Gujarat Model,” The Hindu, September 20, 2014.

  41. Drèze and Sen, An Uncertain Glory, ch. 1.

  42. Amartya Sen, “Quality of Life: India vs. China,” New York Review of Books, May 12, 2011.

  43. Branko Milanovic, “The Question of India’s Inequality,” globalinequality blog, May 7, 2016.

  44. Nisha Agrawal, “Inequality in India: What’s the Real Story?” World Economic Forum, October 3, 2016.

  45. Jain-Chandra et al., “Sharing the Growth Dividend.”

  46. Global Wealth Report 2016.

  47. Chakravarty and Dehejia, “India’s Income Divergence.”

  48. The ADB paper concluded: “Had inequality not increased, India’s poverty headcount would have been reduced from 32.7% to 29.5% in 2008.” Kang, “Interrelation between Growth and Inequality.”

  49. Era Dabla-Norris, Kalpana Kochhar, Nujin Suphaphiphat, Frantisek Ricka, and Evridiki Tsounta, “Causes and Consequences of Income Inequality: A Global Perspective,” International Monetary Fund, June 15, 2015.

  50. James Crabtree, “Gautam Adani, Founder, Adani Group,” Financial Times, June 16, 2013.

  51. “Gautam Adani Kidnapping Case: Underworld Don Fazl-Ur-Rehman Produced in Ahmedabad Court,” DNA, August 11, 2014.

  52. Deepali Gupta, “Why India Inc’s on the Dance Floor,” Economic Times, February 14, 2013.

  53. Megha Bahree, “Doing Big Business in Modi’s Gujarat,” Forbes, March 12, 2014.

  54. Tony Munroe, “Billionaire Adani Prospers as Modi Stresses Development,” Reuters, April 10, 2014.

  55. Shares in Adani Enterprises rose 137 percent in the year to May 16, 2014, the date of the announcement of Modi’s election victory, according to Google Finance.

  56. Manas Dasgupta, “CAG Slams Modi Regime for Financial Irregularities,” The Hindu, March 31, 2012.

  57. P. R. Sanjai, Neha Sethi, and Maulik Pathak, “Adani’s Mundra SEZ gets environment clearance,” Livemint, July 16, 2014.

  58. Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, Advait Rao Palepu, Shinzani Jain, and Abir Dasgupta, “Modi Government’s Rs 500-Crore Bonanza to the Adani Group,” The Wire, June 19, 2017.

  59. Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, Advait Rao Palepu and Shinzani Jain, “Did the Adani Group Evade Rs 1,000 Crore in Taxes?” The Wire, January 14, 2017.

  60. Amrit Dhillon, “More than 100 Scholars Back Journalist in Adani ‘Crony Capitalism’ Row,” Sydney Morning Herald, July 25, 2017.

  Chapter 4: India Modified

  1. Milan Vaishnav, “Understanding the Indian Voter,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, June 2015.

  2. Ullekh NP and Vasudha Venugopal, “Gujarat Promises Continued, Accelerated and All-Around Progress: Jagdish Bhagwati & Arvind Panagariya,” Economic Times, June 20, 2013.

  3. Vaishnav, “Understanding the Indian Voter.”

  4. K. V. Prasad, “TsuNaMo Gives BJP Decisive Mandate to Govern,” The Tribune, May 16, 2014.

  5. Pratap Bhanu Mehta, “Modi’s Moment Alone,” Indian Express, May 17, 2014.

  6. Sumegha Gulati, “In Modi’s Vadnagar, ASI Searches for Hiuen Tsang’s Lost Monasteries,” Indian Express, March 14, 2015.

  7. “Selected Indicators 1950–51 to 1999–2000,” National Informatics Centre, Government of India.

  8. Mukhopadhyay, Narendra Modi, p. 196.

  9. Prashant Dayal and Radha Sharmal, “A Loner, Even at the Top,” Times of India, December 31, 2007.

  10. “Hindus to the Fore,” The Economist, May 21, 2015.

  11. “Religion Data: Population of Hindu/Muslim/Sikh/Christian—Census 2011 India,” National Census Survey, Census Organisation of India, 2011.

  12. Guha, India after Gandhi, p. 98.

  13. “The Man Who Thought Gandhi a Sissy,” The Economist, December 17, 2014.

  14. Annie Gowen, “Abandoned as a Child Bride, Wife of India’s Modi Waits for Husband’s Call,” Washington Post, January 25, 2015.

  15. Mukhopadhyay, Narendra Modi, p. 243.

  16. Marino, Narendra Modi, p. 26.

  17. Ellen Barry, “Indian Candidate’s Biography Has an Asterisk: A Wife, of Sorts,” New York Times, April 10, 2014.

  18. Mukhopadhyay, Narendra Modi.

  19. “In Pictures: Narendra Modi’s Early Life,” BBC, May 26, 2014.

  20. Ashis Nandy, “Obituary of a Culture,” Seminar, May 2002.

  21. Jo Johnson, “Radical Thinking,” Financial Times, March 31, 2007.

  22. “Report by the Commission of Inquiry Consisting of Mr. Justice G. T. Nanavati and Mr. Justice Akshay H. Mehta,” Home Department, Government of Gujarat, September 18, 2008.

  23. Siddhartha Deb, “Unmasking Modi,” New Republic, May 3, 2016.

  24. “Gujarat Riot Death Toll Revealed,” BBC News, May 11, 2005.

  25. Ashutosh Varshney, “Understanding Gujarat Violence,” Social Science Research Council, 2002.

  26. Human Rights Watch, “ ‘We Have No Orders to Save You,’ ” April 2002.

  27. “Sanjiv Bhatt: Gujarat Police Officer Critical of PM Modi Sacked,” BBC News, August 20, 2015.

  28. Martha C. Nussbaum, “Genocide in Gujarat,” Dissent Magazine, September 2003.

  29. Shashank Bengali and Paul Ritcher, “US Eager to Forget about New India Premier’s 2005 Visa Denial,” Los Angeles Times, September 25, 2014.

  30. Vinod K. Jose, “The Emperor Uncrowned: The Rise of Narendra Modi,” The Caravan, March 1, 2012.

  31. Heather Timmons and Arshiya Khullar, “Is Narendra Modi’s Gujarat Miracle a Myth?” The Atlantic, April 7, 2014.

  32. Zahir Janmohamed, “The Rise of Narendra Modi,” Boston Review, June 28, 2013.

  33. Ashutosh Varshney, “Modi the Moderate,” Indian Express, March 27, 2014.

  34. Sanjeev Miglani, “Modi Says Shaken to Core by Gujarat’s Religious Riots,” Reuters, December 28, 2013.

  35. Sruthi Gottipati and Annie Banerji, “Modi’s ‘Puppy’ Remark Triggers New Controversy over 2002 Riots,” Reuters, July 12, 2013.

  36. Jaffrelot, “The Modi-Centric BJP 2014 Election Campaign,” p. 151.

  37. “Watch Modi’s Fiery Attack on Rahul, Sonia in Amethi Live on India TV,” IndiaTV/YouTube, May 5, 2014 (https://youtu.be/​4ic5T02586s) (accessed December 18, 2017).

  38. Ian Buruma, “India: The Perils of Democracy,” New York Review of Books, December 4, 1997.

  39. Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man, p. 13.

  40. Robert D. Kaplan, “India’s New Face,” The Atlantic, April 2009.

  41. Rohit Trivedi, “Narendra Modi: Secularism for Me Is India First! We Will Understand Its True Meaning Then Votebank Politics Ends!” www.narendramodi.in, August 31, 2012.

  42. James Crabtree, “Pockets of Wariness amid the Delirium in New Leader’s Home State,” Financial Times, May 17, 2014.

  43. “#PMSpeaksToArnab: Read Full Text Here,” Times Now, June 27, 2016.

  Chapter 5: The Season of Scams

  1. Douglas Busvine and Rupam Jain, “Who Knew? Modi’s Black Money Move Kept a Closely Guarded Secret,” Reuters, December 9, 2016.

  2. Suchetana Ray, “Govt Didn’t Have Enough Time to Prepare for Demonetisation: Piyush Goyal,” Hindustan Times, December 3, 2016.

 
3. Busvine and Jain, “Who Knew?”

  4. “PM Modi: ‘Corruption, Black Money & Terrorism Are Festering Sores,’ ” The Hindu, November 9, 2016.

  5. “India’s Bonfire of the Bank Notes,” The Briefing Room, BBC Radio 4, January 26, 2017.

  6. “Union Budget 2017: Full Speech of Finance Minister Arun Jaitley,” Times of India, February 1, 2017.

  7. “PM Modi: ‘Corruption, Black Money & Terrorism Are Festering Sores.’ ”

  8. Rory Medcalf, “India Poll 2013,” Lowy Institute, May 20, 2013.

  9. Corruption Perceptions Index 2016, Transparency International, January 25, 2017.

  10. Coralie Pring, “People and Corruption: Asia Pacific—Global Corruption Barometer,” Transparency International, 2017.

  11. “Deloitte Forensic Protecting Your Business in the Insurance Sector,” Deloitte, 2014.

  12. “Rahul Gandhi Tears into Modi’s ‘Suit-Boot Ki Sarkar,’ ” Times of India, April 21, 2015.

  13. Panagariya, India, p. 336.

  14. Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar, “Paying Record Taxes Is Bliss,” Swaminomics, February 10, 2008.

  15. Kumar, “Estimation of the Size of the Black Economy in India, 1996–2012.”

  16. “Narendra Modi in Goa Full Text: Once We Get Clean, We Need Not Worry about Even One Corrupt Mosquito,” Firstpost, August 11, 2017.

  17. “Teary Eyed Narendra Modi Takes On Rivals, Reaches Out to People on Demonetisation,” Financial Express, November 14, 2016.

  18. James Crabtree, “Modi Plunders India’s Cash. Indians Cheer,” Foreign Policy, November 28, 2016.

  19. William Dalrymple, “The East India Company: The Original Corporate Raiders,” The Guardian, March 4, 2015.

  20. Gill, The Pathology of Corruption, p. 44.

  21. Oldenburg, “Middlemen in Third-World Corruption.”

  22. Bhagwati and Panagariya, Why Growth Matters, p. 87.

  23. Pei, China’s Crony Capitalism, p. 8.

  24. Vaishnav, When Crime Pays, p. 31.

  25. James Crabtree, “India: Lost Connections,” Financial Times, September 2, 2012.