What’s the problem with billionaires in power? Nothing, according to some people. Declared wealth is ‘white’ or legal wealth – and that’s all that matters. Some stalwarts actually claim that it is good if the super-rich are in power, because they would be less enamoured of wealth than the poor, hence more focussed on working for their constituents.
Alas, this is a myth. According to a recent study of billionaire politicians globally (Krcmaric, Nelson, and Roberts; Cambridge University Press, 2023), rich politicians are generally more likely to “oppose social spending programs, prize efficiency over equality of outcomes, [and] view economic inequality as a result of individual choices and a rather than structural factors.”
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And rich politicians are increasingly the norm, with extreme wealthiness now a common characteristic of anyone in Indian politics. According to media reports, 439 members of the current Lok Sabha were crorepatis when they were elected in 2019. According to one report of 2022, the average Member of Parliament (MP) today is not just a crorepati but a substantial one: The average Lok Sabha MP is worth about Rs 20 crores, while the Rajya Sabha MPs are 4 times worse, at an average of Rs 79 crores. And even this is peanuts compared to the wealthiest politicians, who wallow in thousands of crores. Not only this, but the wealth of politicians is found to grow exponentially, the longer and more successful they are at electoral politics.
All this has no connection to the wealth of their constituents, of course. The per capita annual Indian income has nearly doubled since 2014-15 (when Modi came to power), say most reports, but that average figure hides the reality that only a few Indians have grown rich under Modi – and not just rich, but phenomenally rich – while many others have seen their real incomes go down. From the pandemic till November 2022, the rich have seen their income surge by 121%, while the number of hungry people in India grew from 19 crores to 35 crores. According to the Oxfam India report of 2023 (‘Survival of the Richest: The India Supplement’), and the World Inequality Lab report of March 2024, the top 1 percent in India now own more than 40% of India’s wealth, while the bottom 50% (half the population) owns just 3-6%. Inequality in India is currently among the highest in the world, and higher than it was under colonial rule, the era so vilified by today’s politicians.
Things are so bad that if you earn the ‘average’ income of India, you are earning more than 90% of the population – that’s how skewed we are.
Comparing our politicians – many flourishing in the rarified air of luxury cars, multiple foreign homes, and tons of gold – to the vast majority of their constituents in Goa and India – who languish in the most wretched of employment, housing, healthcare, and environmental conditions – is it really possible that the former can ever ‘represent’ the latter?
But then, they are not even trying. It is well-known that people are not entering politics today to ‘serve the people’, as the cliché goes; they are entering only to make money, either directly or indirectly (through ensuring government policies which profit themselves). It is starkly visible that electoral politics is now one of the most lucrative of careers — far better than becoming a doctor or an engineer, the top career options of yore. We are surrounded by career politicians, who may help a constituent here and there, who may spend a fraction of the lavish government funds at their disposal on a few public works, and who will definitely slap you on the back and ask about your kids, but who would never dream of disturbing the system in even the smallest of ways. For them, the system is perfect. Their sole focus is thus on success in their chosen career, which means winning elections, getting plum positions in power, keeping their friends/funders happy, and making even more money for themselves.
But this lucrative career is not for everyone. For this career, to have crores at your disposal has become a basic requirement, because the more money the candidate has, the more likely are they to get party backing and also win the elections. Hence the big funders of the past, the electoral bonds of today, but even more the growth of super-wealthy candidates contesting against super-wealthy candidates – all to become our so-called representatives. Elections have become the time to choose which billionaire you prefer – not to represent you, of course – but use you as the stepping-stone to even more billions.
Isn’t this a bit too much? Even if we believe that things can’t change, even if we think that today’s sham democracy is all that’s possible – even by these very low standards – most of today’s candidates should be completely unacceptable as contestants for power. Because, even if electoral politics in today’s India is not a route to changing society for the better, but just a means to become rich for the individual politician, why should only the super-rich – who surely don’t need more wealth – be allowed to benefit? And similarly, why should successful politicians be allowed to hog political power non-stop for decades just because their charisma and political backing ensures that they win elections?
If political power is basically a very profitable job, then the holding of this job needs to be made accessible to all, just like other government jobs. This requires two steps. First, the banning of the ‘creamy layer’ of society from electoral politics – similar to what happens in caste-based reservations. And, second, banning anybody who has held political power from holding it again. Every citizen should have the right – and duty, actually – to hold political power. Today that right exists only on paper. But banning the billionaires as well as the career politicians will allow more people to participate in the holding of power, and that wider participation will surely rock the rotten boat of the Indian establishment, something that we desperately need.
(Amita Kanekar is an architectural historian and novelist)
