Just being recipients of a healthy diet and good schooling has ensured that hundreds of thousands of Indians have had an unbridgeable head start over hundreds of millions. In India, nourishment and education have the same effects as material inheritance — a form of capital whose returns are much higher than the national economic growth.

Mr. Piketty has, naturally, gladdened Indian intellectuals with socialist tendencies, among whom there is a disproportionate number of bearded men who love the alliteration “crony capitalism.” Mr. Piketty, though, does concede that there is some merit in the notion that economic growth is a rising tide that lifts all boats. But the moral of the book, in a way, is that it is such a lousy metaphor. Because a tide should lift all the boats uniformly, without prejudice, while modern society, according to Mr. Piketty’s data, is rigged to favor a few over most, and that is not because they are exceptionally talented or more hard-working than the rest.

Over the past several months in India, as the general elections loomed, there was a debate within the upper reaches of the middle class. One group agreed with Amartya Sen, a Nobel laureate in economics, that India will not grow faster unless it invests more in improving the lives of the poor.

The other group was on the side of the economist Jagdish Bhagwati, whose fans say should have been awarded the Nobel. They said India should not squander too much money on social services. This is remarkable because the modern English-speaking middle class of India, as Mr. Sen has pointed out, are the children of a generation that was the creation of the government’s bizarre generosity. Under Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, India invested in higher education while ignoring primary education. So those who had the means to reach college soared, while the vast majority who looked to the government for decent schooling were doomed, as were their progeny.