Forbes India Quotes

Under Narendra Modi, the rich have become richer, and inequalities have increased. A 2018 Oxfam report revealed that 10 percent of the richest Indians garnered 77.4 percent of the nation’s wealth (against 73 percent the year before)119 and that 58 percent of it was in the hands of India’s “1 percent” (while the world average is 50 percent). The earnings made by this handful of people in 2017 were equal to India’s budget for that year. Also in 2017, the fortune of India’s 100 richest tycoons leaped by 26 percent. The richest of them all, Mukesh Ambani, increased his wealth by 67 percent, according to Forbes India120—a publication, moreover, that belongs to this billionaire. Ambani’s fortune again rose by 24 percent in 2018.121 Going slightly beyond the 100 richest, the IIFL Wealth Hurun India Rich List identified the 953 richest Indian families and gave figures showing that their fortune represented more than 26 percent of the country’s GDP122—which meant that if a tax rate of 4 percent was applied to the nation’s 953 richest families, it would give the government the equivalent of 1 percent of India’s GDP.123 According to Crédit Suisse, the number of dollar millionaires in India jumped from 34,000 in 2000 to 759,000 in 2019,124 which means that the country has one of “the world’s fastest-growing population of millionaires.”125 The average wealth level of these millionaires increased by 74 percent over this period.

I started tracking billionaire wealth in my home country, India. Back in 2010 anger against the new wealth elite was growing, and my first parsing of the Forbes lists helped explain why. Although India is relatively poor, billionaire wealth had soared to the equivalent of more than 17 per cent of gross domestic product, one of the highest shares in the world, with most of the gains accruing to a narrow set of families in industries prone to crony capitalism.

Born in 1938, Ellen Sirleaf is the first elected female head of state in Africa, serving as the 24th President of Liberia from January 16, 2006, until January 22, 2018. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and received the Indira Gandhi Prize from Pranab Mukherjee, President of India. In 2014, she was listed as the 70th most powerful woman in the world by Forbes magazine.