India’s corporate boom: Not for the greater common good

Modi era may have promoted the union of big capital with Hindutva, but people are beginning to see that cronyism is hollowing out the nation.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi with business tycoons at a meeting to discuss ways to improve growth and job creation, in New Delhi on January 6, 2020.  | Photo Credit: PTI

The Forbes World Billionaires annual list for 2024 included 25 new names from India, taking the number of Indians to 200. The Narendra Modi decade has undoubtedly been fantastic for a section of the super-rich, and through the years of COVID, reverse migration, agriculture crisis, and the collapse of many small and medium industries, the nation has efficiently produced billionaires. The joke is on us. We live in an age when some suggest that the bloated wedding of an heir to an Indian business magnate should be seen as a form of job creation.

The Modi years have blinded some of us to the morality of the common good, which translates to benefits for the entire community and the welfare of all. Among the factors leading to the reduced mandate for Modi’s BJP are the failure of Hindutva mobilisation, the supposed fading appeal of Modi himself, and the collapse of what the BJP/RSS call “social engineering” (other parties call it social justice). All these issues will continue to be tested in electoral battles this year.

But the other big factor lurking behind the public disenchantment is the realisation that the state is receding from the public sector and that pieces of what constitute people’s assets are being hawked to private players. It is indeed the norm in India that private fortunes are also built from government contracts and leases to public resources and/or through privatisation of public assets. One can therefore suggest a direct causal link between the creation of billionaires and the diminishing jobs in the government and the public sector.

In many parts of India the poor have understood that the regime may have thrown free rations their way but is dismantling structures that protect their future. In Uttar Pradesh, for instance, the BJP lost a chunk of votes and seats because of the perception that government jobs are shrinking and being outsourced to the private sector and reserved posts are being given to general category candidates. To add credibility to this narrative, a Minister from a small caste-based party in Uttar Pradesh, Apna Dal (Soneylal), wrote to the Chief Minister about this after the June 4 mandate.

Neglect of Railways

There is also the clear neglect of a national asset like the Railways, a lifeline for all Indians (except those who attend weddings in private jets). The Railway Ministry was once a prized portfolio, and political heavyweights such as Lal Bahadur Shastri, Jagjivan Ram, Madhu Dandavate, Ram Vilas Paswan, Nitish Kumar, Mamata Banerjee, and Lalu Prasad have held it. The Modi regime made a point of ending the 92-year-old tradition of a separate Railway Budget and merged it with the Union Budget in 2017.

The current Railway Minister, Ashwini Vaishnaw, is an IIT graduate and former IAS officer, who was appointed Deputy Secretary in Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s PMO where, his Wikipedia entry says, he contributed to “creating public-private partnership framework in infrastructure projects”. He went for an MBA to Wharton Business School, left the Civil Service in 2010 to join GE Transportation (then Siemens), and in 2012 set up automotive component companies in Gujarat.

In 2019, the Modi regime brought him into the Rajya Sabha. As someone who left government service for private business (before being called to serve Prime Minister Modi), one can surmise his orientation. Today, besides the Railways, he also helms the Ministries of Electronics and Information Technology, and Communications.

Under his watch, one of the world’s greatest rail networks seems to be getting systematically destroyed and under-prioritised to the extent that the 2024-25 Budget made only one reference to it, that too in passing. Meanwhile, the number of train accidents has shot up. In 2024 alone, there have been seven accidents so far. When the Modi regime shows interest in the Railways, it is in high-cost vanity projects such as a bullet train between Ahmedabad and Mumbai. Any backdrop that allows the Prime Minister to pose and inaugurate something shiny gets prioritised, while ordinary people in ramshackle carriages get derailed.

Other monopolies continue to be created. For instance, unlike earlier, it is no longer possible to watch the Olympics on the national TV channel, Doordarshan, as Reliance-owned Jio has purchased the telecast rights. Prasar Bharati sources say they cannot legally compete on cable, but if consumers install a Doordarshan dish antenna for Rs.1,500, they can still watch the games on DD Sports, which is funded by taxpayer money.

While Jio’s subscriber numbers would have zoomed, the figures for public health will not. Experts note that the allocation for health in the Budget declined from 2.3 per cent in 2019-20 to 1.9 per cent in 2024-25. But the word “health” was mentioned four times, clubbed with other phrases about social welfare. From that perspective, I suppose it fared better than the Railways.

In the pre-Modi days, the BJP collected funds mostly from its support base among shopkeepers and slowly shifted to big corporate donors after Vajpayee came to power in 1998. But the Modi era has marked the union of big capital with Hindutva as never before. The numbers speak for themselves: Modi ran the most expensive election campaign in Indian history this year.

The ‘Modi method’

The BJP’s financial wealth has escalated, according to their own income tax statements submitted to the Election Commission, even as the “Modi method” has ensured the impoverishment of other political parties through the use of state agencies to take over their assets and deny them new sources of funding. In 2019, too, the Centre for Media Studies found that India ran the most expensive election in the world, surpassing the money spent in the 2016 US election that brought Donald Trump to power.

Yet, the BJP’s 2024 effort fell short. If one hears the voices of young first-time MPs in Parliament today, they are making speeches about protecting the lands and rights of people from corporate greed and political malevolence. The issue of caste has returned to centre stage because it is the pivot on which the idea of social justice turns.

The marriage of big corporate oligarchies with Hindutva forces worked on the premise that people would be so enraptured by issues of identity that they would not focus on their rights, livelihoods, and material conditions. This edifice created by Modi still holds, but it is being challenged. Many people are beginning to see cronyism hollowing out the nation.

Saba Naqvi is a Delhi-based journalist and author of four books who writes on politics and identity issues.