Announcing the establishment of wealth based indices, Mr. Vivek Jain, Managing Editor of Times of India, said that wealth index would enable millions of star-stuck followers of India's business tycoons to keep abreast of the quantum of wealth generated or lost by them on a minute-to-minute basis. Explaining the equations of these indices, Mr Jain said that one index point would be equal to Rs.100 crores. This extremely simple model of index calculations would enable people to easily convert movement in indices to the equivalent value in crores of rupee and also allow easily determination of rankings of individual billionaires on the wealth charts.
When Mr. Jain was asked by a reporter why people would want to know the exact quantum of wealth owned by India's richest on a minute-to-minute basis, he answered, "The inspiration to develop a wealth index arose from our observation of traffic details of articles on our website featuring the statistics of wealth lost by India's richest during stock market crashes. We were surprised to see that such articles registered abnormally higher number of hits in comparison to our regular articles and news stories, indicating that our readers were tremendously interested in knowing how much of wealth erosion is suffered by India's wealthiest during stock market downturns."
"Intrigued by this observation, we launched deeper investigations through which we learned that our readers derived pleasure from learning about the extent of losses suffered by members of the billionaires club, especially at the time of sudden market crashes. One of our readers we surveyed for our investigations revealed - 'Knowing that market crashes do not spare even the richest of the rich, helps soften the blow of such crashes to a very large extent. When stock markets crash by 10-15%, my portfolio gets eroded by only a few lacs but such a crash wipes out thousands of crores from assets of Mukesh Ambani. Knowing that India's wealthiest suffer thousands of times more losses than me makes it considerably easier for me to digest the pain of loss of few lacs' - Our readers are a very queer lot unable to grasp that with assets running into tens of thousands of crores, the wealthiest people of the country don't actually suffer or even register any feelings of loss when faced with erosion of few thousand crores of their assets" Mr. Jain said with a sound that almost sounded like a snigger.
"With the introduction of Wealthex, we are hoping to fill the void generated when the action in the stock markets becomes too hot to handle and results in indifference towards sensex movements." added Mr Jain.
Mr. Jain admitted that focusing so much of attention on following the wealth of a few elites in a country where more than half the population survives on less than a dollar a day is highly unwarranted. "We had initially thought of developing an index that would monitor India's development, growth, per capita income levels and rise/decline in poverty levels. But we soon realized that indices focusing on macro-economic statistics are extremely slow-moving and highly predictable.Unlike stock market created booms and busts, which create & destroy thousands of crores of wealth in matter of days and weeks, development-based indices remain more or less static, moving by minute percentage points over longish periods of time."
"In these times of fast-paced life, people desire fast-moving action & ceaseless excitement, even if the action comes from other people who are moving fast in life and not them, even when all the excitement is happening in the lives of someone else. With this wealth index, we will provide people with fast-moving action & ceaseless excitement happening in the lives of the rich and the famous which we hope will fill the void generated from lack of action and excitement in their own lives." concluded Mr. Jain
