When it’s the three-day-long prenuptial bash of the youngest son of the richest man in Asia, superlatives begin to flow as naturally as the oil from the biggest refinery in the world in Gujrat that the family of Mukesh Ambani controls. The Guinness Book of World Records features their house in Mumbai as the most expensive private residence in the world.

The guestlist of the extravagant show, which reportedly costed upwards of $150 million, included Paula Hurd and Bill Gates, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg and almost the entire Bollywood glitterati in addition to a host of other luminaries from all over the globe. Rihanna performed, purportedly for a fee of $8-9 million and the superstar Khans danced as the select crowd cheered.

With a few exceptions, the right of the Ambanis to burn a tiny part of their humongous fortune on a pre-marriage celebration, went almost unquestioned. The Indian media seemed to be exulting over the food and drink, even something prepared for the elephants at Vantara, the private wildlife enclave said to be the pet project of the groom-to-be Anant Ambani.

After all, as American economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen (1857—1929) theorised, it is the conspicuous waste—defined as the “allocation of resources, time, and effort that detract from the life process”—that differentiates the contemporary ultrarich (assets over $1 billion) from merely the wealthy (centi-millionaire superrich) of the productive class. Perhaps the Ambanis don’t have any direct stake in the economy of Nepal and aren’t contemplating to send an exploratory team to the scheduled investors’ summit in Kathmandu.

It is not publicly known whether anyone from Nepal was invited to the private extravaganza, but the prenuptial pageant of the Ambani scion was the favourite topic of animated conversations at marriage receptions of the middleclass in several party palaces of Kathmandu. Most of such banquet halls—and quite a few hotels too—lack adequate parking space. Often an entire lane of a thoroughfare becomes the parking lot for the guests.

What public roads are for the Nepalis, airports are for the ultrarich in bigger plutocracies. Guests of Ambanis were to arrive in their private jets. A section of the Indian Air Force base at Jamnagar, which is also used as a domestic airfield for civilian flights, was transformed into an international airport for 10 days. The existing terminal wasn’t equipped to handle the flight load, so the Airports Authority of India erected a purpose-built structure. After depositing their passengers, luxury carriers of the guests were diverted to the airports of Rajkot, Porbandar, Ahmedabad and Mumbai for parking.

In a damning piece, political scientist Pratap Bhanu Mehta rues, “By any measure India is a grotesque plutocracy. But it is striking the degree to which the plutocracy is now so transparent”. In a similar vein, writer Arwa Mahdawi laments the “shift in the zeitgeist”, where “As the world burns, the ultrawealthy are spending like there is no tomorrow—and they’ve stopped hiding it”.

Desperate disparities

Inequalities in India are so transparent that it has ceased to even ignite public debate. The country where 800 million people survive on foodgrains doled out by the government also has the largest number of zero-food children—children between 6 and 23 months of age who did not get to consume any milk, formula, or food in the last 24 hours—by far in the world. Little wonder, it ranked 111th out of 125 countries in the Global Hunger Index 2023. Even in per capita income terms, it ranks 141st out of about 190 countries. Since whatever happens in India has a bearing on Nepal, it’s impossible to ignore the festering disparities of Indian society.

The self-declared dollar billionaire Binod Chaudhary alone qualifies to be called ultrarich of Nepal by global standards. Considering the stratospheric real estate prices in the country and undeclared assets of several other wealthy merchants, it’s possible that the number of centi-millionaires in Nepal is higher than publicly known. Most such super-rich merchants prefer to maintain a low profile and pull the strings of political economy from behind the scenes.

There is a showy stratum of the nouveau rich with considerable disposable income, comparable in assets to the Ultra-High-Net-Worth Individuals of India, that likes to flaunt its status and power through ostentatious living and conspicuous consumption. Direct beneficiaries of crony capitalism and shady deals, the showy stratum is perhaps confident that wealth can weather out any changes in the political regime, and it can buy fresh patrons to promote its economic interests. Contentedly ensconced between the centi-millionaires above and the comfortable class below, perhaps it feels protected against the possible eruption of suppressed frenzy of the oppressed poor.

The ultrarich, the superrich and the nouveau rich need not worry however: The process of depoliticisation and consequent populism all over the world has diverted the attention of the poor from their abject misery towards the spectacular opulence of heavenly and earthly deities. The proletariat has become the precariat, and it has lost the will to transform itself into the working class to fight the exploitative bourgeoisie for the control of the means of production.

On several Melamchied—a verb of Nepanglish neologism that means digging up a road to lay down pipes and leave it unattended—streets of middle-class neighbourhoods in Kathmandu, parked cars routinely take up half the space of narrow thoroughfares. In one such locality, it is possible occasionally to see a Model 3 Tesla being watched over by the chauffeur in the front and a guard at the back to ensure that none of the motorcycles squeezing through the leftover space scratches its body even accidentally. The obscenity of opulence goes unnoticed as admiring glances of passersby appear awestruck by the logo and blood red colour of the fancy automobile.

Resigned withdrawal

Since assisting the East India Company crush the Indian Revolt of 1857, Nepal has had a long tradition of submitting its fighters at the service of the British Empire. It defies all logic, however, that thousands of youths have willingly enlisted into the Russian army to fight Ukraine. Some of them want to return and have appealed Indians rather than their own government to be rescued from the frontlines.

Millions of workers in their prime toil in the heat of West Asia and Malaysia to keep the economy of Nepal afloat through their remittances. Villagers from Rukum apparently paid human traffickers Rs6 million each for ‘backdoor entry’ into the United States, some of whom were deported back emptyhanded. Poverty and lack of appropriate job opportunities in Nepal are the push factors behind the exodos of human resources. The pull of easier jobs that human traffickers in different garb promise is also partly responsible for luring youngsters. But at least part of the reason is attributable to the demonstration effect: It’s only people with money that matter in contemporary society.

In addition to depoliticisation of society and marketisation of workforce, perhaps it’s the planned promotion of fatalism through propagation of religious orthodoxy that has dispirited the young from fighting to take control of political economy. The rage has been sublimated into religion.