India's 10 richest people. Poverty is still widespread

The oil industry magnate Mukesh Ambani has a personal fortune of $ 47.8 billion. Among billionaires, even entrepreneurs who could only rely on their ingenuity. The poor throughout the country are still tens of millions.

New Delhi (AsiaNews / Agencies) - Among the 10 richest people in India, there is one with a personal net worth of $ 47.8 billion, and self-made entrepreneurs are on the rise. 

These are the results  from a study published by the CEOWORLDS magazine, which draws up a list of 10 Indian Scrooges. Alongside these enormous personal wealth, however, there are still millions of citizens living below the poverty line, which means less than $ 1.9 a day.

Absolutely, the richest Indian is Mukesh Ambani, oil industry magnate, president of the oil giant Reliance Industries Limited. He inherited the group from his father, originally a textile manufacturer. In 2016 he revolutionized the Indian telecommunications sector, putting the cheapest telephone package with internet data on the market.

Behind Ambani, Azim Premji, president of Wipro, the third-largest software services provider with a wealth of $ 20.9 billion; and Lakshmi Mittal, president of ArcelorMittal, the largest steel producer in the world. Of these three, the only "self-made" billionaire is Premji: he made his fortune by taking over his father's cooking oil store and expanding it into the service sector.

Indian society, however, continues to be torn apart by profound social differences, visible as soon as we move away from large urban centers. They are the millions of poor people living in slum shacks, with less than two dollars a day. According to the 2011 census, in the country the indigents were 21.9% of the population. A Brookings Institution study published in July 2018 reports that 5% of the population live in extreme poverty, ie 70.6 million (out of a total population of almost 1.3 billion).

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