Antilia! Photo from Wikimedia Commons.
Let’s talk about moderation and excess for a few minutes. Over the past few days I have thought about the completion of Mukesh Ambani’s skyscraper-mansion with great distress. For those who haven’t been following this story, here’s a quick synopsis: Mukesh Ambani is the fourth richest man in the world, and the richest in India. He, along with his rival brother Anil, inherited Reliance Industries from their billionaire father. Reliance Industries later turned into Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group, one of the largest private conglomerates in the world, after a splitting of the former company by the brothers.
In 2008, Ambani began construction of a twenty-seven-story condo tower in downtown Mumbai. Ambani hired Chicago-based architects Perkins & Will to design the structure called Antilia, named after a legendary Spanish island of gold. The building soars more than 550 feet in the air and resembles Lego pieces piled unevenly upon one another, without the variation in color.
Of all the questions that could be asked about this structure, the most important and obvious is why? Why choose to build a twenty-seven-story mansion in downtown Mumbai, among the slums and poverty? Since Ambani has refused to comment on his personal motives or the building itself, we can only speculate.
Ambani wanted to build a home for himself, his wife and his three children. Like many rich families in the market for a new house, they wanted to create something that would be a custom-made utopia. Naturally, he decided to build the most expensive home in the world in downtown Mumbai. Sources have listed the value of Antilia to be around $1 billion, although this is a disputed price.
Mumbai has a dynamic unlike any city in the world. Recently, the great metropolis transformed into a destination for India’s upper class. A good friend of mine, Jeremy Cramer-Gibbs, spent this past summer working at the stock exchange in Mumbai. He described the city as a “massive slum with nice neighborhoods, but few and far between. When you’re walking through the city you feel the dichotomy between the rich and poor. It’s unlike any city I’ve ever seen.” He pointed out the fact that Ambani’s mansion is not the first or only lavishly designed home in the city.
The appearance of mansions and upper class displays of wealth in India’s metropolis is a recent phenomenon that has changed the dynamic of this terribly confusing city. I acknowledge that plenty of billionaires in America and abroad have mansions that are worth upwards of $200 million, but this particular mansion is significant because of its location and worth. To me, this is like the completion of one of the pyramids in ancient Egypt, a landmark structure that I doubt any other billionaire will surpass in value or audacity. More importantly, Antilia brings up difficult questions about what moral responsibilities the world’s elite have, if any.
I think the fact that Ambani is able to create this structure is an insult to the impoverished citizens in Mumbai. I believe that this structure will create resentment among citizens of Mumbai and possibly establish Ambani as a tyrant. This is exactly the kind of lavish display of wealth that the richest man in India should not be displaying. He has a responsibility as a role model for his people to display moderation and understanding rather than excessive greed. Do the unthinkably rich have no responsibility to display moderation? Or is it all relative? Should we not consider Antilia an insult to the poor since he spent a relatively small portion of his wealth on the building? Or is this enormous house, rising high above a vast slum city of unthinkable poverty, a potent symbol of the excesses the rich will indulge in when unconstrained by any moral code?
It seems that this example is especially egregious due to the proximity of the slums. It’s not the same as Bill Gates building a compound in a wealthy suburb of Washington. Furthermore, if we look at this outrageous display of wealth and tell ourselves that we don’t care, what do we care about? If this particular display of wealth does not trouble us, then do we agree that the rich deserve to do whatever is within the means of their bank account? Think about it and get back to me. •
Is it really the “display of wealth” that concerns you more than the wealth itself, and the methods of acquiring it?
I don’t think I articulated this point well enough, but I think the “display of wealth” is closely tied to the means by which Ambani made his money. Since I don’t know much about Ambani’s business ethics or his company I chose to focus on the building itself as a representation of all the issues with the world’s richest people. That being said, I agree with your point that we should be just as concerned, if not more concerned, with the methods Ambani used to acquire his money. The fact that he inherited a large percentage of his fortune further complicates this issue.
The problem is not “all the issues with world’s richest people”. The problem is, if anything, all the issues with the world’s poorest. Of course, they are intimately related, and therefore it might be instructive to conduct a brief analysis into the impact of the capitalist superstructure on the microeconomic arena.
By focusing on the representation, the reality of (the exponential) modern post-colonial economic inequality is masked, or as is revised in your response, considered secondary to “the issues concerning the richest people”. It is as if the suggestion is that the richest must be “humanitarian”, “considerate” or “tolerant” in their use of wealth (you recognise that the acquisition and the ethics involved therein are important to you, so I’m leaving that out, and focusing on your core issue: representation),so as to be apologetic for global capitalism. If they have the wealth, they had bloody well build a humongous, opulent structure. If you understand the “dynamics” of the “confusing city of Mumbai” a little, your surprise at the erection of this structure would be absent. “It seems that this example is especially egregious due to the proximity of the slums,” you say. No! Nothing egregious about it. In India, the city-suburb distinction is not akin to the American case. Really, the point is, what would it do if he built a domestic monument elsewhere? He might feel nicer about himself, and so might we for his consideration, ceteris paribus. Would it change anything in the slums?
Moreover, the apologetic guilt continues even if, say billionaires like Gates or Ambani invest in allegedly humanitarian causes (and even assuming they are humanitarian), does that suffice? No, I’m not suggesting they have an extended responsibility beyond what they do, or any at all – but rather bringing to the fore the uncomfortable political facts of the global economy that are masked by CSR, humanitarian aid, human rights interventions and other such instruments of the neo-liberal order.
Lastly, by finding objects of scrutiny such as billionaires who spend on homes, we run the risk of evading reflexivity unto ourselves. Are we so unlike them, after all, in principle and practice (given the scale of activity is the differentiating factor)?
This is getting too long, perhaps we could extend this conversation elsewhere – but simply, the problem is, again, also, not “with all the issues of the world’s richest” but the fact that they ARE this rich, while the vast majority are not, and their paths to richness murky, sinister or downright vulgar.
My attempt is not to ridicule, or in any way discourage writing about foreign social spheres, merely to point out alternatives views from alternative social positionings.
P.S. A rather similar article is featured elsewhere http://www.smartmoneydaily.com/personalfinance/billion-dollar-house-ultimate-luxury-or-living-hell.aspx
Mihir,
I take your claims very seriously, but I don’t think your points were what I was trying to address with this article. I am less concerned with what this representation means to the city of Mumbai and more concerned with what Antilia represents in terms of a symbol of wealth cross-culturally speaking. The primary goal of my article was to bring about a discussion of the topic itself, kudos to you for responding and let’s continue this discussion. My choice to focus on the representation of the super-wealthy via Antilia as the issue, rather than the poor living beside Ambani in Mumbai, did not address the problems of poverty. In my defense, discussing the alternative social positions would necessitate a much longer article and dialogue. The ethical issues that you’re addressing are very important. There’s a valid distinction between the methods that “are sinister and vulgar” to make money and the use of that dirty money. Furthermore, it seems that these methods, that you are obviously more knowledgeable about than I, have a correlation to the poverty level in the city and the Indian population itself. My references to distinguishing Antilia from Bill Gates house, were not to exonerate the actions of Gates, though it seems Gates displayed greater social tact, but to focus on Antilia as the WORST case of egregious display of wealth. I grant your point that even if Ambani had built this mansion in a suburb far away from Mumbai there still would be slums, but that’s a separate issue. I also grant that I do not understand the city-suburb distinction in India quite as well as you. However, the distinction was negligible to what I was getting at. Is it morally acceptable to display wealth in this way? Clearly as this thread demonstrates, it’s up for debate. Let’s make this debate about this single issue, rather than the complicated issues that could be associated with it.