Page 74 - EducationWorld Oct 2021

Postscript

Comrades can’t get it Billionaires Row in Bangalore’s upscale Koramangala
suburb, purchased another villa for Rs.76 crore in the
same neighbourhood. Earlier in April, he had acquired
VEN AS INDIA’S FRONTLINE BUSINESSMEN
and new genre entrepreneurs are working overtime a residential property for Rs.36 crore. Likewise, Ashok
Eto revive the economy after the Covid-19 disrup- Kumar Nedrumalli, promoter-director of the temping
tion, the country’s Left politicians and fellow travellers company TeamLease, splurged Rs.24 crore on a residen-
in the academy continue to vent their ire — especially on tial property in tony Kasturba Road.
social media — against business leaders taking big risks This love of luxury and epicureanism that’s spreading
to kick-start the sputtering economy and make good the in this iniquitous professedly socialist society, is the mir-
loss of momentum during the pandemic months. A recent ror opposite of America’s generous plutocrats for whom
publication of the US-based Forbes magazine’s list of philanthropy is a natural outcome of personal affluence.
the world’s dollar-billionaires — among whom Mukesh Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Hershey, Rockefellers and
Ambani and Gautam Adani have improved their rankings thousands of America’s super-rich reside in relatively
— has provided anti-success arm-chair lefties renewed modest self-serviced homes but have lavishly endowed
enthusiasm to allege rampant crony capitalism. libraries, gymnasia and sports fields in campus America.
According to the latest Forbes list of richest Indians, Unschooled in history, India’s techie billionaires are
Ambani’s wealth is estimated at $92.6 billion followed living it up on tiny oases in a creeping desert of poverty.
by Adani at $75 billion. Oxfam International, a breeding Like the Russian nobility a century ago, they’ll be the last
ground of armchair lefties, rightly laments that 10 percent to learn that the commies are coming.
of India’s rich control 77 percent of national wealth,
a circumstance it attributes to “crony capitalism and Housing deficit whodunit
inheritance”. Yet the plain truth is that the 2As and their
forbears ventured into industries where public sector
enterprises, much loved by lefties, proved to be miserable EWS REPORTS THAT INDIA’S PROPERTY
failures after draining away billions of taxpayers’ money. market has revived to pre-pandemic levels haven’t
A fundamental canon of economics is that entrepre- Nbeen given sufficient publicity. According to
neurs and businessmen become wealthy only if they Knight Frank, an internationally respected real estate
provide goods and services that society needs. In a world consultancy firm, in the July-September quarter, 12.5
where bankrupt communist ideology has been universally million sq. ft of office space and 64,000 homes were sold.
rejected, lefties don’t seem to be aware that after substan- Although ex facie, these numbers are impressive, the
tial liberalisation and deregulation of the dirigiste Indian residential units sold in particular, meet a fraction of the
economy in 1991, the 2As are competing with the largest pent up demand for affordable housing countrywide.
corporations worldwide on level playing fields. According to an Observer Research Foundation 2019
The panacea for rising income inequality dear com- study, 63.67 million urban and rural families — over 25
rades, is not to pull the rich down from their seats, but to percent of the total number — don’t have adequate hous-
raise up the masses through QEFA (quality education for ing. Neglect of the housing sector is most visible in urban
all). Pity the lamenting lefties can’t grasp this elementary India. Citing 2012 data, the study says that in urban India
proposition continuously propagated by your editors for 15 million homes (out of 18.78 million) are over-crowded
over 20 years. and need to be replaced.
The stark truth is that during the past seven decades, a
private builder-politician-bureaucrat mafia has flourished
Spreading epicureanism countrywide. Under the guise of protecting rural citizens
from urban real estate developers, this mafia engineered
HERE’S A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE BETWEEN an artificial shortage of land for housing development
the billionaires of the world’s largest democra- projects. For instance, until very recently rural land could
Tcies. In the US, entrepreneurs who rise above the only be sold or leased to rural land owners. Moreover in
herd are empathetic towards their less capable brethren urban India, stringent rent control laws were enacted
left behind. This empathy prompts magnanimity. They destroying the rental property market. More shockingly,
make large contributions to charities, trusts and their long-term housing loans, aka mortgages — almost a
alma maters. On the other hand, India’s new rich rarely fundamental right in all developed countries of newly-
sympathise with the plight of the masses heaving and married couples — were prohibited. The country’s major
sweating at the base of this country’s iniquitous socio- banks — nationalised in the public interest in 1969 —
economic pyramid. started dispensing housing loans only in the mid-1990s.
In the garden city of Bangalore dominated by the big Evidently, someone high up from the establishment
bucks IT and ICT corporations which is experiencing a took the decision to deny housing finance and/or
huge digital divide threatening to permanently infantalise build affordable government housing for the masses
thousands of out-of-school children, the city’s fat cat bil- in Singapore and China style. Curiously, none of the
lionaires are busy purchasing luxury homes and proper- hundreds of babus and media stars flooding the market
ties instead of addressing this ballooning problem. with their shallow memoirs has shed light on this great
According to local media reports, in June, Infosys injustice which immiserised an entire generation of
co-founder and former managing director Kris Gopal- midnight’s children by denying them half-decent roofs
akrishnan who resides in a palatial home in the so-called over their heads.

74 EDUCATIONWORLD OCTOBER 2021