Indians are getting rich, but not in India. It's the Indian Diaspore that is minting money hand over fist, all the way from London, England, to San Diego, California, and producing millionaires by the dozen. There were, at the last count, over 300 'sterling' millionaires in England, and perhaps 10,000 or more 'dollar' millionaires in the US. There are, according to the same count, at least a hundred Indian millionaires in London alone.
Fifty years ago, when I first went to England as a student, there were not even 100 Indians in the whole of London, let alone millionaires. If we happened to sight an Indian on the other side of the road, we would cross the road to shake hands with him and hear an authentic Indian voice. The sight of an Indian girl in a sari tiptoeing daintily through the soft London rain made our day.
There were, probably only half a dozen Indian restaurants, most of them managed by dour Bangladeshi sailors who had jumped their ship. A meal cost a small fortune but after the relentless intake of fish and chips, it was worth it. We rarely saw an Indian newspaper or tasted an Indian sweet. And rice was a delicacy.
But now there are 300 millionaires and more Indian restaurants than you can count. The millionaires were like other Indians when they first arrived in England, refugees all of them from Idi Amins Uganda or other parts of Africa. They didn't have much when they arrived with their beddings and steel trunks, as all Indians did when they travelled. But now they have everything.
If Indians can make millions in England and New York, why can't they do so in Mumbai or Delhi or Kolkata? Why don't we have as many millionaires per square mile as in those countries? We have, of course, our own Kubers but their richest Indian in the world is now Laxmi Mittal, an NRI, not Premji or Ambani.
In theory, Indians can make money anywhere, even in India. Dhirubhai Ambani became the richest Indian in a single generation, overtaking Tatas and Birlas, who had been at it for over a century. But he was an exception. Making money is considered a sin in India, unless the government allows you to.
For nearly half a century the government controlled all money-making operations, from setting up industry to exports. If you wanted to do anything smelling of money, you had to take out a licence, as if it was a gambling joint you were setting up. You couldn't set up steel plants, or oil refineries, or run an airline or railways. You could import but had to shell out heavy duties. You made the same measly car model year after year, which broke down at the first touch. And the government watched you at every step, as it did gangsters.
But Indians are a clever lot and when they went abroad they discovered for the first time that making money was not a crime, and you could make money even out of hamburgers, which is nothing but vada-pao, and chicken tikka, without anybody breathing down your neck. Tatas could not add a single ingot of steel for thirty years, but Laxmi Mittal could buy up steel mills by the dozen, without anybody's permission.
To make money you have to be free to make money. And freedom is, almost by definition, anathema to the licence-quota politicians. Things have changed in India now, but don't bet on it.
This article was originally published on May 19, 2005.
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