Lamborghini and free food.

"In February, a penthouse in a Worli (Mumbai) luxury tower was sold to industrialist BK Goenka, chairman of Welspun Group, for Rs 240 crore (Rs 2.4 billion)." TOI. Within a month, "A triplex in an under- construction tower at Walkeshwar in south Mumbai was sold for Rs 3.69 billion." "Real estate experts say luxury housing - defined as houses priced over Rs 1.5 crore (Rs 15 million) - made up over 15% of the 63,710 units sold in the NCR (national capital region) last year." TOI. "Experts say the demand for luxury and ultra-luxury (priced over Rs 3.5 crore in the NCR) housing is likely to continue despite rising interest rates, primarily driven by the aspiration of home ownership." On the other hand,"With the pool of affordable homes shrinking rapidly, mid-segment buyers in metros like Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Pune and Chennai are pushed to the fringes. As houses in the Rs 50 lakh-60 lakh (Rs 5-6 million) bracket are at least 30-40 km away from  city centers, the middle class is left with two choices: commute for hours both ways or pay a fortune towards rent to stay in the city." TOI. "According to a recent Anarock report, the share of affordable housing across seven Indian cities dropped 20% during the first half of 2023." "Because big homes bring in big bucks, reputed builders are launching only mega ventures with a base price of around Rs 1.5 crore." "While the lower end of the market is eking out a living after the pandemic's economic shocks, the other end comprising upwardly-mobile Indians in the metros and bigger towns has been shopping as if there's no tomorrow." TOI. "The class divide has never been more pronounced in the market." "Lamborghini sports cars, which retail upwards of Rs 4 crore (Rs 40 million), are fully sold out for this year in India." "Unlike rural areas, almost half the workers in urban areas are regular workers who receive regular wages/salaries," wrote Prof Himanshu. "While wage earnings of casual workers in urban areas increased by 3.3% per annum between 2017-18 and 2020-21," "the earnings of a regular worker in the April-June quarter of 2021 were 3% lower than in the same quarter of 2018." "Essentially, a regular worker was earning 14% lower wages than a decade ago." Not just Lamborghinis, an IMF working paper by Bhalla, Bhasin and Virmani has shown that extreme poverty, based on the World Bank's extreme poverty line of consumption of $1.9 per day, has also disappeared to an insignificant 0.86% of the population, wrote Swaminathan SA Aiyar. Others differ on the level of abject poverty but, "all show that poverty has plummeted after the economic reforms of 1991 that helped accelerate GDP growth. Clearly fast growth is the best poverty alleviator." Poor people are no longer poor because of free food grains to over 800 million people. NDTV. Using spreadsheet simulations, "at India's current rate of growth (5.9%), we would achieve a $5 trillion economy by 2029-30, and a $10 trillion economy in the 'upper middle-income' bracket by 2041-42. But we would still be far from joining the high-income countries by mid-century, by when our demographic dividend would be exhausted," wrote Alok Sheel. In all this debate about economic growth in India, along with rising wealth of people, no one talks about inflation. While China's consumer inflation fell to below 1% in March despite opening of the economy, ET, we in India are happy that inflation rate fell to 5.66% in the same month. ET. Since India is never going to be a manufacturing giant like China, a growing economy will result in soaring prices as consumer demand rockets, which will increase the number of poor. Lamborghini and free food. Unlikely to change.