Large Business Owners

Arena 3.1 · weight 2 · reading 38.3 · opposed majority

13.1Scope

The commitment of India’s biggest owners and the money they give.¹

The arena is measured by the top 100 owners: their documented commitment by wealth, their money to parties (transactional at half), the news channels they own (by content audit), and the causes they fund.

13.2Significance

Media ownership, ad budgets, election funding, lobbying. Transactional money is counted as borrowed power: it is expected to leave when the BJP leaves office.

13.3Indicators and weights

Table 13.1 lists the 4 indicators of the arena, the weight of each within the arena, and each indicator’s reading (the Hindutva-aligned share, from 0 to 100).

Table 13.1. Indicators of arena 3.1

13.4Reading

The arena reads 38.3, 11.7 points below parity, and is classified as opposed majority (a reading below 45). With a weight of 2 of a total 107.7, it contributes 0.71 points to the composite reading of 45.7.

The indicators diverge: the highest reading is for news TV owned by top-100 owners, by content audit (100.0), the lowest for documented commitment of the top 100 (by wealth; transactional counts against) (9.5).

13.5Measures and exhibits

The exhibits below are the Atlas’s own views of the data behind each measure: shares by side, the largest units, breakdowns by source, recipient and country, money-flow diagrams and time series. Full row-level ledgers are in the data file (Appendix D).

Measure 1. Documented commitment of the top 100 (by wealth; transactional counts against)

Reading 9.5%

Measure 2. Party money of the top 100, transactional at 50% (FY2019-20 to FY2024-25)

Reading 51.5%

Stated rule: bonds and trusts to the BJP from committed owners in full, from transactional owners at 50%, against all non-NDA parties; NDA allies are swing; trusts cut to FY2019-20..FY2024-25 with the per-year ET allocations (owner, round 2 D3; audit DATA14-033; audit/applied_work/round2/d3_partymoney.py). BJP 2,491 vs other 2,345 cr; Tata group = all 15 Progressive Electoral Trust donors (DATA14-031)

Measure 3. News TV owned by top-100 owners, by content audit

Reading 100.0%

Measure 4. Owners’ ideological-cause philanthropy

Reading 13.2%

Measure 5. Prosperity felt: voters better off, and happy with jobs, incomes and prices

Reading 32.2%

Feel better off 32 vs Do not 68

Measure 6. Context: shown for reference, not part of the reading

13.6Evidence base

The arena rests on 107 coded units and 458 money flows. Of the units and flows, 141 are coded Hindutva-aligned, 193 opposed and 231 neutral, mixed or transactional. By source grade: 415 grade A, 7 grade C, 3 grade E.

The full set of rows for this arena, each with its source, is in the Atlas data file (Appendix D).