India has a fraught relationship with wealth

Indians have a fraught relationship with wealth. We are more accepting of sacrifice, self-denial and austerity.

In the epics, world-renouncing ascetics are worshipped by emperors. When someone resourceful wants something lofty or unattainable, they perform a yajna, which involves making sacrifices into a holy fire.

A lot changed over the subsequent centuries, but not so much our attitude towards wealth. Even in post-Independence India, socialism was deemed sacred, capitalism not so much. This sentiment was invariably magnified in our movies—which, regardless of their claims of being works of fiction, held a mirror to society.

In countless movies, there was a thin line between a wealthy man and a bad man. The villains, usually engaged in smuggling, were the moneyed folks who smoked fancy cigars and wore expensive suits. Even if the rich man was an honest and law-abiding citizen who slaved day and night to earn his wealth, he had to—around the climax—admit the superiority of the impoverished young hero, sometimes unemployed, who wanted to marry his daughter on the sole claim that he loved her, with scant attention paid to how he was going to provide for her. The factory owner was the bad egg, the worker hero the messiah. The ‘system’ the hero took on in a passive-aggressive way in the 1960s and in an aggressive way in the 1970s was made up of the rich and powerful.

In the real world, things began to change especially after the onset of economic reforms in the 1990s. But somehow the overhang of socialism remained. So, NR Narayana Murthy was praised for creating a raft of rich people connected with Infosys by distributing equity, much more than some others who held on to the bulk of the equity. This writer is an admirer of Mr Murthy, but to admire one does not necessarily mean not admiring others who follow a different business philosophy. When entrepreneurs, businessmen and managers say their primary job is to serve the stakeholders by making their companies perform at the best possible level, they deserve respect. They do their part by creating jobs and maximising revenues, which pay salaries and bonuses.