Obscene Opulence

“I am weary of seeing today’s

working classes so wretchedly

housed, fed and clothed, while

billions are squandered every

year over unsightly statues…”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

November 2017: A Credit Suisse report sparks global debate when it claims that the richest 1 per cent of humanity controls 50 per cent of the world’s wealth. The report dominates headlines, stirs academic debates and triggers coffee-table outrage.

August 2025: Credit Suisse comes out with another report. The headline is eerily familiar: Top 1 per cent of the people own half of the Planet’s riches.

Nothing fundamental has changed in the last eight years, except that the world is beset by wars, hunger, climate upheavals and social anxiety. Another change is that the chasm has widened, with the rich getting richer even as countless billions are pushed into poverty or squalor, their dreams throttled by the ‘system’. The divide is particularly stark and glaring in disaster zones such as Gaza, where children go hungry for days, many starving to death. In refugee camps and bombed-out towns, families survive without water or power, unable to manage even one meal a day.

Poverty is not limited to war-zones. The bottom 50 per cent shares 2 per cent of global resources. The poorest billion earn $1.90 a day. In some nations—Yemen, Syria, South Sudan and Gaza—basic survival is at risk. Over half the children are malnourished, with hospitals unable to function and food trucks blocked. Malnutrition remains a shameful reality, with 35 per cent under the age of 5 years ‘chronically undernourished’. Billions of lives are torn asunder by hardship, hunger and hopelessness. In these same countries, the number of billionaires is growing. As a society, we are being pacified by the yawning chasm between a plutocratic elite and billions enduring daily hardship. The yawn is growing.

Billionaire Ascendancy

‘Global Wealth Rankings 2025’ says the top 10 richest people on Planet Earth are Elon Musk, with US $408.5 billion (Rs 35,49,600 crore), Jeff Bezos ($243.6 billion), Larry Ellison ($296.1 billion), Mark Zuckerberg ($202 billion), Bernard Arnault ($167 billion), Warren Buffett ($155 billion), Larry Page ($144 billion), Sergey Brin ($138 billion), Steve Ballmer ($124 billion) and Amancio Ortega ($118 billion). With the exception of Arnault and Ortega, the list is all American, concentrating vulgar wealth not just among people, but within borders too.

In the past decade, the fortunes of these 10 men have exploded. Musk’s wealth jumped by $147 billion in 2024 alone. Zuckerberg’s has more than quadrupled since 2015. Ellison rose from under $60 billion to nearly $300 billion. Bezos, though plateauing, added billions via ownership, stock buybacks and policy-favoured corporate structures. People like Bill Gates, who once enjoyed tech-supremacy, have slipped out of the top echelon, though his wealth has grown in absolute terms.

The numbers do not shock anymore. We have been numb for a while.

India’s position in the wealth equation is unique. On one side, it has a strong economy, a resilient stock market and a rising list of billionaires (165 in July 2025). Lavish weddings, Rs 1,000-crore family offices or residences and private jets have become elitist symbols. On the other side, 80 crore Indians depend on free foodgrain from the government. A recent report shows over 20 crore people live below the poverty line, with no access to education, clean water or healthcare.

The widening disparity could be the reason that many rich Indians are leaving.

The Great Indian Flight

Over 12 lakh Indians have given up their citizenship in the last few years, moving to Dubai, Singapore, London, New York or Lisbon under investor visa programmes, golden passports or ‘Global Citizenship by Investment’ schemes. They include startup founders, real estate barons, technology entrepreneurs and Bollywood titans. Their reasons for ‘flight’ range from the ease of doing business to a better quality of life and education for their children. Deeper digging, though, also reveals a discomfort with the nation’s (and their own) future trajectory.

The rich may be hedging their bets, but their flight bodes poorly for a country aspiring to lead the world in the 21st century. It is a spectre of elite secession, not physical but psychological. The top tier is getting globalised, while the bottom rungs are being left behind to grapple with inequality, inadequate education and fragile livelihoods.

The picture is similar in other world regions, sometimes starker still. For those on the bottom rung, the future is not about economic imbalance, but about a life centered around institutionalized cruelty. The figures in the Credit Suisse report aren’t cold abstractions; they map tough realities. Families, squeezed by strife and blockade-driven ruin, cannot feed their children for days on end. Starvation is no longer hypothetical; it is happening in many politically-charged regions. Hunger, lack of schooling and preventable disease stalk families in vast rural, urban slum and displacement zones across continents. We are now a dangerous society, where 10 figure fortunes wait in banks for a few, while armies of the poor fight for a meal. To the Godly, the picture is morally warped.

From Caesar to Carnegie

The wealth divide is not unprecedented. History is beset with epochs where plutocracy prospered at the expense of the multitudes, in eras of unchecked accumulation. Between 1870 and 1900, the Americas saw the Rockefellers, Morgans and Carnegies amass riches, while workers toiled in unsafe factories amid crushed union uprisings. Inequality reigned till reforms threw in some correction. In France, the aristocracy enjoyed tax-free lives of opulence, while peasants were laden with unjust levies. The outcome was a revolution and, eventually, retribution. Rome once allowed a lewd concentration of wealth among patricians, leading to social collapse, internal revolt and the empire’s downfall. In all these instances, wealth concentration triggered social instability.

Whenever inequality has become overbearing, societies have retorted with polarization, unrest and revolution.

At first glance, the super-rich appear distant from the daily plight of commoners, especially since wealth has profound and distorting consequences. It skews policymaking, as lobbying outpaces public will. It dilutes democracy and meritocracy, replacing it with plutocratic influence. It narrows opportunity, as asset ownership and not effort determines wealth-creation. It erodes social cohesion, replacing aspiration with resentment. When society rewards only those who have access to capital and ownership, dreams are no longer achievable. They can only be inherited.

In India, the top 1 per cent own 40 per cent of the wealth, while the bottom 50 per cent have under 10 per cent. And the income inequality is widening. Infrastructure, digital access and social schemes have become better for some, with inequality remaining deep-rooted across castes, geography and gender. Worryingly, the rich are distancing from the state, increasingly consuming foreign education, foreign healthcare, foreign citizenship and, often, foreign allegiance. For them, India is now merely a market, not their nation.

Moment of Reckoning

Credit Suisse’s two verdicts in eight years should not end up as just another headline forgotten soon. The idea that the top 1 per cent can permanently own half of everything, while children across the world starve, is not sustainable. It is not decent. It is not moral. It is not safe. If we do not rethink the architecture of capitalism, redistribute opportunity and rebuild social trust, we are inviting a global fracture that no amount of plaster of Paris, philanthropy or surveillance capitalism would be able to manage, or repair.

From tax justice to universal healthcare and from affordable housing to decent education, the time for performative policies is over. The world needs fundamental and structural changes. If this is not done, eight years from now, in 2033, we may read another Credit Suisse report, one that screams ‘Richest 1 per cent still own half the world’. That would be deadly, because the silence of those left behind might have turned into something louder, or far more dangerous, by then.

The writer is a veteran journalist and communications specialist. He can be reached on narayanrajeev2006@gmail.com. Views expressed are personal