A colorful and revealing portrait of India's new billionaire class, in a nation torn by radical inequality
Since abandoning its insular socialist system in 1991, India has rivaled China as the world's fastest growing economy. But this prosperity is far from evenly shared: its top 1% now own nearly 60% of its wealth. In megacities like Mumbai, where half the population live in slums, the extraordinary riches of India's new dynasties echo the Vanderbilts and Rockefellers of yesterday, as they funnel profits from huge conglomerates into lifestyles of conspicuous consumption.
As a foreign correspondent in India, James Crabtree takes readers on a personal journey to meet reclusive billionaires, fugitive tycoons, and shadowy political power brokers. His dramatic story reveals the truth behind India’s many corruption scandals and chronicles the remarkable lives of the power elite and the resentment and admiration they draw.
From the sky terrace of the world's most expensive home to teeming slums and mass political rallies, Crabtree dramatizes the battle between crony capitalists and reformers, a tense struggle between equality and privilege playing out against a combustible backdrop of aspiration, class, and caste.
The Billionaire Raj is a vivid account of a divided society on the cusp of transformation—and a struggle that will shape not just India's future, but the world's.
