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Thursday 4 December 2008

The billionaires of Rajasthan

The desert breeding ground of India’s billionaires

‘This is backwoods, really backwoods,’ says Aditya, as the rackety, jam-packed bus pulls into Rajgarh, a small town in the north-west of Rajasthan, India’s desert state.

The Mittal haveli — built with the relatively modest fortunes of Lakshmi’s ancestors — is one of the humblest in Rajgarh. There are no murals and most of the eggshell-blue paint that once covered it has long since worn away, exposing pinkish brown plaster behind. In place of traditional carved wood haveli doors, the Mittal house has a crude corrugated iron gate. It’s difficult to equate this with Lakshmi’s 12-bedroom mansion in Kensington Palace Gardens — the world’s most expensive home when he bought it in 2004. But the family still uses the Rajgarth house. Lakshmi’s aunt Saraswati lives here: in her early fifties, with a beaming smile, she is tickled enough by a rare visitor to Lakshmi’s birthplace to show off the well swept, whitewashed courtyard from which arched doors lead to two downstairs bedrooms, one of which is where Lakshmi was born. To the side is a garden where a calf, tethered to a tree, picks half-heartedly at some hay. Saraswati has few complaints about her lot, but not everyone in Rajgarh feels the same way.

Aditya Choudhary, a computer programmer from the Jat farming caste, says: ‘Lakshmi Mittal isn’t so much respected. In India to be a really big person, a really respected person, he has to do public work.’ In Pilani, for example, much of the town is taken up by schools, universities, ashrams and museums set up by the Birla family, who also have an airstrip for their private planes. Lakshmi is investing $20 billion in giant steel plants elsewhere in India but by comparison with other Marwari families, the Mittals have left their home town alone. When Lakshmi did come in January he was clear about the limits of his generosity: ‘He said he will help everybody who works hard,’ said one villager. ‘He said he doesn’t want to give charity.’

More articles from: Richard Orange | this section

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