You have to expand the availability of affordable higher education not by 20-30 percent but ten times, and very soon. More than the display of wealth, what causes envy and frustration is the lack of opportunity and the disparity it creates between you and your neighbour whose child may have cracked the lottery of some JEE for IIT or a medical college or CAT for IIM and thereby joined a tiny new charmed circle, its size so severely limited by a criminal supply constraint created by a non- functional state and a divisive, ideological, game-playing HRD Ministry.

Can the Prime Minister, or this government do any of this? It is one thing to lecture the chambers. The corporates turn out in their finery to listen to prime-ministerial sermons twice a year and then go back to their business of competing, investing, growing and creating wealth, and thereby greed and envy. It is the responsibility of the statesman and the reformer to provide the balance and equanimity and to be the honest, and effective intermediary.

PS: To those businessmen who say that the PM’s words were too strong, I can’t help but quote Kevin Spacey’s character in Seven. Questioned by the police on his string of murders of those who have “sinned”, he says, “Wanting people to listen, you can’t just tap them on the shoulder anymore. You have to hit them with a sledgehammer, and then you’ll notice you’ve got their strict attention.”