In light of the Corona pandemic

Indian billionaires are getting richer and millions of poor people in the country are getting poorer

Mukesh Ambani at the News 18 Rising India Summit in February 2019. From the source

India suffered an economic recession and a brutal wave of the Corona virus, and millions of citizens suffered from poverty, but while the Indian citizens struggle to live on a few dollars a day, the rich people in the country have become richer and more influential, as their combined wealth has risen to tens of billions of dollars. last year.

The fortune of Reliance Industries Group Chairman Mukesh Ambani has reached more than $80 billion, an increase of nearly $15 billion over last year, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Not far from him is the founder of the Andani Group, Gautam Andani, whose fortune has risen from less than $13 billion last year, to $55 billion today.

These two men, who are now respectively the first and fourth richest people in Asia, together have more wealth than the GDP of some countries.

Comparing their vast fortunes with the rest of their fellow Indians, it becomes clear that there is a growing gap between rich and poor around the world, which has become a particularly characteristic feature of India, Asia's third largest economy, which accounted for more than half of the global increase in poverty in 2020.

Asia's billionaires are ahead of their peers

Ambani has spent most of the epidemic period as the richest person in Asia, ahead of many Chinese businessmen, and has held his comfortable position for most of this year. and Dell founder Michael Dell, whose company made a huge profit in 2020, raising billions of dollars from Silicon Valley giants, such as Google and Facebook, which are betting on controlling the Internet in one of the largest markets in the world.

Ambani doesn't feel alone at the top. Until recently, his Indian compatriot Adani was the second richest man on the Asian continent. His group (the Adani Group) controls companies ranging from ports, airports, thermal power and coal mines. Like Reliance, the Adani Group has done exceptionally well in the Indian stock market. Shares of Adani Enterprise, for example, have jumped more than 800% on the Mumbai National Exchange since June 2020, a sign that investors are optimistic about Adani's ability to Betting in key sectors of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's economic development goals. Both Indian billionaires have their roots in Modi's home state of Gujarat.

Shares in Adani's companies plunged last month, after India's Economic Times claimed that the country's National Securities Depository had frozen foreign funds holding billions of dollars in stakes in the company.

Although the conglomerate said the report was "grossly wrong," the group's founder lost nearly $20 billion in net worth in less than a month, but despite that sharp drop, Adani remains among the richest men in Asia. He now stands directly behind Chinese water magnate Zhong Shanshan, and Tencent (Tishi) CEO Bonnie Ma, according to Bloomberg.

Other Chinese billionaires, including Alibaba founder Jack Ma, have taken a beating as Beijing cracks down on tech entrepreneurs.

The sheer dominance of Ambani and Adani is not surprising, according to Marquis Investment Managers founder Saurabh Mukherjea, who adds that nearly every major sector in India is now ruled by one or two of these incredibly powerful corporate houses.

"The country has now reached a point where the 15 largest commercial houses represent 90% of the country's profits," Mukherjea told CNN Business.

He also says, "The rule book that guides these two billionaires is the same as in other countries," referring to some of America's famous business tycoons throughout history, including John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie.

While Adani could easily incur a one-day loss of $6 billion, most of the country has been experiencing the life-changing economic turmoil during the pandemic.

After India imposed strict restrictions on travel and business activity to control the spread of COVID-19, the share of wealth held by the country's richest 1% rose to 40.5 percent by the end of 2020, an increase of seven percentage points over 2000, according to a report. Credit Suisse announced global wealth in June.

slip into recession

India plunged into an unprecedented economic recession last year, after a nearly four-month shutdown.

While the economy has recovered this year, unemployment numbers approached record levels in May, after a massive spike in COVID-19 cases this spring.

According to an analysis by the Pew Research Center, India's middle class shrank by 32 million people last year, as a result of the economic slowdown, compared to what was expected before the pandemic.

"In the meantime, the number of poor people in India (who earn two dollars or less per day) is expected to increase by 75 million, due to the (Covid-19) recession," Pew Senior Researcher Rakesh Kochhar wrote in March.

He added that it represents nearly 60% of the global increase in poverty rates, and this increase did not take into account the second wave.

By comparison, Kochhar added, the change in living standards in China was "more modest."

• Chinese billionaires, including the founder of Alibaba, took a hit, coinciding with Beijing's crackdown on technology entrepreneurs.

• India slipped into an unprecedented economic recession last year, after a closure that lasted about four months.

And while the economy has recovered this year, unemployment numbers approached record levels in May, after Covid-19 infections rose.

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