The top 1% of India’s population own nearly 60% of the country’s total wealth. And our financial systems seem to have been fine-tuned to function best for this economic elite. If an extremely poor villager wants to buy a goat worth Rs 5,000,  micro-finance institutes would happily charge interest rates of over 30%. Meanwhile it seems to have become a trend for our ultra rich to dupe public financial institutions of massive amounts of money and then leave the country. However, at the end of the day, Corporations always receive ‘incentives’ while food growers, who are literally dying, are very magnanimously given ‘handouts’ & ‘subsidies’.

The staggering amount of money that Nirav Modi’s corporations have been able to access is almost too much to comprehend. To put this into context, the chart below shows the scale of capital that was made available to Nirav Modi’s corporations by one of our exemplary nationalized banks PNB (Punjab National Bank).

Nirav Modi’s companies received unsecured loans of Rs. 11,380 crore from Punjab National Bank. Comparatively:

• Rajasthan’s loan waiver of Rs 8,000 crore will be accessed by ~22 lakh small farmers
• The entire Delhi Police will function for one year on 7,427 crore.
• Uttar Pradesh’s first phase of loan waivers for ~11 lakh small farmers will be Rs 7,371 crore
• The healthcare plan AKA “ModiCare”(which exists only on paper & is an insurance plan) touted to be the biggest in the world by Arun Jaitley has an annual budget of Rs 2,000 crore and will cover 10 crore families (supposedly).
• The much maligned Haj Subsidy which was holding the country back for decades and saw all INDIANS unite to rid us of pseudo-secularism had an annual budget of Rs 700 crore.
• The yet to be formed Lokpal, which will one day inquire into allegations of corruption against public functionaries has an annual budget of Rs 4.29 crores.

It is possible for a corporation to use India’s financial systems to access more money than is earmarked for an entire state’s farmers or the annual budget of the police force of our capital city. 3,000 children die everyday in India from diet related illnesses and the average farming household (of five people) lives on Rs 6,500 per month. Yet we can’t seem to find a way to tailor our financial systems to address needs that should matter much more than that of a luxury jewelry brand. But enough of this – let’s get back to celebrating the country’s GDP growth already. #AccheDin.

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