Ambani galvanizes both sides of the wealth divide. In a sign of how difficult it is to reconcile two competing forces—enjoying incredible, almost preposterous material success while wondering how Indian it is to do so, especially in a city where more than 6 million people live in slums—Ambani seems to be struggling. “A lot of us think the world is flat,” he said in Washington during a June awards ceremony sponsored by the U.S.-India Business Council. But Ambani disagrees. “I think the world is spiky . . . because 15 to 20 percent of people in the developing world live in plenty, while 80 percent live in scarcity.” He went on, “We have people who have to survive on $2 a day.... We cannot have islands of prosperity surrounded by oceans of poverty.”

Despite Ambani’s professed concern about inequality, his actions attract attention for their extravagance. Published details about his new house were quickly followed by reports that the land he was building on had been acquired under unusual circumstances from a Muslim charitable trust that had operated an orphanage on the site. City bureaucrats have since been sniping over whether the sale should be allowed to stand. Ambani isn’t known for charitable giving in the way his fellow countryman Tata is, which makes his preoccupation with economic disparity a curiosity. Ambani says that he helps his country by growing his company, offering cheap cell phones, and enabling farmers to sell groceries to the masses.

The Countryside

Mumbai is a tangle of puttering black-and-yellow taxicabs, listing buildings, gnarled train tracks, endless traffic and smog. More people than one could ever imagine occupy the space, and the corrugated metal and blue plastic tarps that are so distinctive of developing-world slum architecture stretch for miles. But drive an hour and a half south of the city and the sky opens up over green hills, farmland, banyan and teak trees, and glossy black bullocks pulling carts. It is here that the full extent of Ambani’s empire-building dream is most apparent, as he angles to take over a tract of land stretching along the coast to establish the country’s largest special economic zone. It’s also where the contrasting fates of India’s towering industrialists and everyone else are thrown into stark relief.

The economic transformation of India is one of the most remarkable stories of the past 20 years, although the reality is more complex than its breathless media coverage would suggest. Two-thirds of India’s citizens live in rural areas, subsisting primarily on agriculture, and their lot has hardly improved during the recent boom. Tens of thousands of farmers have been driven by debt and poverty to commit suicide. According to one government report, more than 17,000 killed themselves in 2003 alone. Thirty-five percent of India’s citizens live on a dollar a day, only 61 percent of the population can read, and at least 100 million people don’t have access to clean drinking water. In certain areas, the country is almost regressing: Some states now have large gender disparities—as few as 800 females to 1,000 males—due to the practice of gender-selective abortions, and though discrimination based on caste has been outlawed, in many respects it still maintains a suffocating hold on people’s lives. In spite of all that, corruption may be the biggest problem India faces. Just about everybody is thought to be on the take; partly as a result, the business environment has acquired a lawless feel, with everything and nothing happening at once.

One of the government’s biggest ideas for promoting investment is special economic zones, areas where firms can operate tax-free under liberal labor and import-export laws. Introduced in 2000, S.E.Z.’s—made up of large swaths of land sold to manufacturing firms—are now being established around the country. The concept was borrowed from China, where it gave rise to that country’s manufacturing hub, the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone. But its implementation has proved to be significantly messier in a democratic country with a tradition of civil disobedience and very little unoccupied land. Many of the projects have met resistance from villagers who don’t want to give up their homes. Plans for S.E.Z.’s in West Bengal, Orissa, and other states have resulted in violent clashes.