Bill gates, the one name that is almost synonymous to Wealth and to Microsoft was till recently the richest man in the world, with assets worth 59 billion dollars! Declared the richest man in the world in the year 1995, he adorned this prestigious and coveted title for almost a decade. Some time back he was briefly overtaken by Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim, but Slim's stint at the top was short term and was again overtaken by Gates. Recently, the whole world was shocked when it was declared that Mukesh Ambani, the chairperson and managing director of Reliance Industries has become the richest man in the world with assets worth 63.2 billion USD. The magic run of the Indian share market was largely responsible for this somewhat unprecedented development.
It is quite expected and accepted when a person from the countries like the US or the UK adorn the crown of the richest man, but it is hard to believe that a man from a third world country that is counted among the poorest in the world would house the richest man in the world. India is a country that is plagued by much social malice like poverty, population, illiteracy, unemployment, superstitions, gender biasness, social stigmas etc. In this country that has a population of over a billion; around 22-23 crores of people are still living below the poverty line.
Disparity in the distribution of wealth continues to be a big blow to the Indian economy. Many of them are not even earning 1 dollar a day. On one hand there are people who are not even earning a dollar per day, on the other hand Indian youth is counted among the highest spending youths in the world. On one hand mergers and acquisitions have been made worth millions, on the other hand the rate of poverty has almost remained static in the span of the last two decades. On one hand larger then life malls, luxury foreign car showrooms are opening, on the other hand the agricultural sector, the backbone of the Indian economy is yet to show profits and improvements. One would not know whether to be happy for India or sad at the superficiality of its development. The rich are growing richer and the poor are growing poorer, thanks to the highly unequal distribution of income in the Indian economy!
The question is whom to blame. Nobody is to be blamed solely yet everybody is responsible for the situation India is in today. The population, the government, the entrepreneurs, the system, or the constitution? Everybody has a role to play. Venturing into this topic is like counting the stars in the sky. Vast and unending. The affluent society of the country is no doubt not apprehensive of spending, yet there are certain concepts that inspite of being very popular in the west and inspite of being quite upmarket are not that popular in India. Ecommerce is one such concept. There are people who buy stuff online. Infact there are many who are too short of time or energy to go hunting for stuffs. Thus they take the easy way out and buy things online. But there are very few concerns in India that are ready to open an estore. Conversely however, there are quite a few software development companies in India that provide and to people living outside India. Many Indian concerns are into . They have clients from all over the world who come to them for software development in order to do business online. But it's very rare that one would find an Indian company venturing into ecommerce web site development. This is one trend that so far India has not maimed from the west!
