India’s business leaders are vastly overrated. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to most of us, given their obvious lack of interest in anyone but themselves, but it still ought to be mentioned now and again, given how so many of us choose to ignore this glaring fact. It’s why we still fawn over them in public, getting out of the way when one of them walks into a room, or asking them for selfies as if they have done anything other than enrich themselves. Managing a company does not make a person special, and it’s time we got rid of that ridiculous notion.

Many of India’s business leaders happen to occupy the roles they do simply because their parents shoved them into it. Their children will do the same, which is why we won’t be rid of a few names in the corporate space for the foreseeable future. Of the ones who haven’t been recipients of ancestral largesse, many have elbowed their way to the top not by displaying overwhelming proof of their intelligence or integrity, but by making sure the right political horses have been backed. This also explains why so many of our public assets have exchanged hands lately, while the rest of us have been busy vilifying teenagers for consuming drugs at parties.