How to become a billionaire in India

Motivational enterprises can be very rewarding. Gaur Gopal Das is a monk and a motivational guru. That’s double dhamaka. If you wear saffron robes, you get to make a lot of money in India. On top of that, you are a motivational guru! Then you are possibly sitting on a gold mine or riding your Rolls-Royce laughing all the way to the bank. I’m not saying this. Gaur Gopal Das is.

In one of his infinite motivational speeches, the Guru said something which I remember as: If you work as a teacher in India for ten years, you save about one or two lakh rupees. If you are a software engineer, you may earn 30-40 lakh. A politician in India can earn something like 30-40 crore in that period. And someone like me, wearing the saffron, can rake in 300 to 400 crore rupees in that period pretty easily.

Gaur Gopal Das was not just employing some hyperbole. His cult, ISKCON, earns millions of dollars every year. Religion sells more than anything else in India. If it is able to masquerade as motivational stuff, it will earn billions. Swamy Nithyananda, Baba Ramadev, Mata Amritanandamayi, Sri Sri Ravishankar, Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev… That’s an endless list of motivational ascetics in India each of whose wealth can buy up the wealthiest capitalists of the Forbes lists.

The annual Forbes list of the wealthiest people in the world has many Indians too in it every year. According to the 2023 list, there are 169 billionaires in India. And there are 80 crore poor Indians, according the Prime Minister.

Yesterday [4 Nov 2023], the Prime Minister declared in his poll rally speech In Madhya Pradesh that his government will continue to provide 5 kg of free foodgrains every month to 80 crore poor Indians for another five years.

Gasp!

80 crore poor people who deserve free rations from the central government in a country that is all set to be a five-trillion-dollar economy. The total population of India is 140 crore. More than half of that population is so poor that they have to be given free foodgrains. But the same country has 169 billionaires, a few thousand millionaires, and fabulously wealthy ascetics who will make the country a five-trillion-dollar economy next year, soon after the general elections.

The problem with people like me is that we don’t trust the electoral promises of politicians. So I need some motivation to get on in this country now. Otherwise I will have to join the millions of Indians who are quitting their own country and settling down abroad in spite of all the racism and other forms of discrimination they may have to face there. In spite of their own country being the world’s messiah, Viswaguru.

I did try to get out of the national borders. Then I realised that I am aging mercilessly. So I tried to write a motivational post to start with – dealing with aging, I mean. And this is what came out. No good. That’s why I remain a humble school teacher.

Yours truly…