Inside the world of crazy rich Indians

All of India was transfixed, as February turned to March, by the spectacle of

Anant Ambani’s pre-wedding celebrations

in Jamnagar, an unlovely industrial town in western India. Mr Ambani is the son of Mr Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest man and boss of Reliance, a giant conglomerate. Mr Bill Gates, Mr Mark Zuckerberg and Rihanna turned up, as did hordes of Indian business tycoons, cricket legends and Bollywood A-listers. The government temporarily converted the local domestic airport into an international one. For hundreds of millions of Indians following the lavish proceedings on TV, social media and in the papers, the festivities stood as shorthand for the tastes and power of India’s rich.

The Ambanis and their fellow plutocrats are household names in India. But they are not representative of India’s wealthy. Billionaires, almost by definition, are a select few. According to Forbes, a compiler of lists, there are just 186 of them in India. Far more consequential to – and representative of – India’s economic story are the legions of dollar millionaires, whose ranks are expanding year by year. They have an outsized influence, relative to their numbers, on patterns of consumption, investment and growth. They tend not to make headlines or advertise their wealth.