The Hindu Business Line : PM’s call on deaf ears

Within a couple of months of the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, fervently pleading with captains of business and industry at one of their gala gatherings to eschew ostentation and be role models of a modest lifestyle in tune with conditions in India where millions live in abject poverty, comes the news report flashed prominently in print and electronic media that the Chairman of the Reliance Industries, Mr Mukesh Ambani, is constructing a plush 27-floor home for himsel f, named Antilia — a phantom island — in Central Mumbai at a cost of Rs 8,000 crore.

Earlier, there was another report that he presented his wife on her 44th birthday a luxury Airbus 319 costing Rs 242 crore ($60 million), custom-fitted with an office and entertainment cabins with game consoles, music systems, satellite television and wireless communication, besides having a master bedroom, a bathroom with a range of fancy showers and a sky bar with mood lighting.

It may well be that other business tycoons are also living it up as majestically, but at least their opulence had not been hitting the aam aadmis of the country so frontally, between the eyes, as it were. In fact, the example of the man who, more than most, has raised the prestige of India worldwide, Mr N. R. Narayana Murthy and his wife, Ms Sudha Murthy, whose wealth is also considerable, had long been not just modest, but austere, in their ways; Ms Murthy, even riding bicycles and travelling in auto-rickshaws.

Pent-up wrath

Of course, on the other extreme, we also had the eyesore of the Romanian dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu, and his wife, who, while professing communism, owned over 15 luxury palaces around Romania groaning with priceless silk, porcelain, marble (some valued at $1,000 and more per square metre), silverware, gold faucets, chandeliers, and carpets and a vast collection of highest priced cars, speedboats and yachts.

All this could not save the couple from the pent-up wrath of the people who rose in revolt in 1989 and overthrew them. Both husband and wife paid with their lives, being ignominiously marched to the courtyard in one of their own palaces in handcuffs on Christmas Day, 1989, to face a shower of bullets from the firing squad.

Public exhibition

One finds it hard to comprehend the working of the mind of people who show themselves to be devoid of all sense of delicacy and social conscience in flaunting their wealth. Do they think that they are thereby impressing the populace? Does it not strike them that they evoke in the aam aadmi only a feeling of utter disgust and revulsion?

Those prone to display their wealth may argue that, after all, it is their money, and what they do with it and how they spend it is nobody else’s business. This is an argument completely bereft of any modicum of compassion or social conscience and commitment. The wealth is theirs, as Gandhiji used to emphasise, to be held in trust on behalf of the poor, deprived and disadvantaged of the society and not to be viewed as some kind of a divine right. The rich of the country should keep their heads and not morph themselves into filthy rich falling for the ugly and vulgar manifestations that are common among some wealthy persons in affluent countries.

The Roman Emperors, in their heyday, were cognisant of the illusory and transient nature of all the pomp and pageantry with which they were surrounded. They specially appointed a person whose duty it was to walk ahead of them in their resplendent regalia crying out loud, “Memento mori” (Remember you will die!)

The practice is worth emulating by those who tend to go overboard in indulging in public exhibition of their riches.

B. S. RAGHAVAN

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