I once introduced an Indian billionaire to Tim Tams. I have admired the indoor swimming pool of another billionaire, complimented a third on the comfortable sofa on his private jet, and inspected another's distinctly lavish office. On another occasion, I rescued a billionaire from a bear hug. When I admired a Persian carpet in a friend's office, he dryly noted "it should be good; after all, I am now a billionaire". One evening, I wandered down to a reception in the retreat of yet another billionaire, bemused by the Swarovski crystal inlaid in the stair rail. The best of all my billionaire acquaintances was exemplary in his gentle courtesy and meticulous punctuality.

I mention those random anecdotes to demonstrate a nodding familiarity with the subjects of James Crabtree's excellent book about modern India, The Billionaire Raj. Let me confess one more connection. I talked regularly to Crabtree during three of his years as the Financial Times' correspondent in Mumbai. Crabtree's premise is that an oligarchy – the billionaire raj or bollygarchs – has established itself as a logical, linear successor to the raj itself (direct British rule) and the licence raj that followed independence.

Where the British raj was an excuse for wholesale looting and exploitation lasting two centuries, the "perverse edicts and myriad regulations" of India's own licence raj exemplified how corruption, bureaucracy, inertia and ill will can stymie development. Under the licence raj, one genteel lady complained about not being able to procure necessities, let alone luxuries or fripperies, or to navigate through a maze of forms, regulations, restrictions and ill will. Her companion at cards responded by suggesting a then-classic remedy: "surely, my dear, surely you have your own smuggler".

The billionaire raj treads over the ruins of the previous two. The rich exert less raw power, even if India's 100 or so billionaires owned more than $US479 billion in assets last year. India's economy is too large and too diverse to be run by or for billionaires. Nonetheless, the most wealthy Indians do wield considerable influence, leverage and sway in what Marxist-schooled planners under the licence raj would have called the commanding heights of the economy.