Not surprising to see such an article in Guardian, known for its left of center leanings. Most of the billionaires in India have public listed companies, and have multiplied their wealth with the resultant growth in the stock markets, hence also contributing to wealth of investors. India's stock market is far superior and far open, to the ones in China, helping in faster monetization of their business. I do remember reading here about the crazy patterns in stocks in China last year, hitting the circuit every day for weeks and months, because they were allowed to list at a much lower value with very low circuit breakers, growing at 5% everyday like clockwork. The same happened in the opposite direction earlier this year and the Chinese market regulator actually stopped trading in many stocks trying to prevent their fall.

The much maligned demonetization exercise carried out in end 2016 had at least one major positive - people started putting their money into mutual funds rather than buying gold. The size of Indian funds has grown manifold since then, and their contribution has bypassed that of foreign funds. With growing number of people entering the middle class with disposable incomes, this is only going to go up.

As for the people like Nirav Modi and Vijay Mallya, an Insolvency and Bankruptcy code was introduced in 2016 which has started showing results. Previously banks would spend years trying to get loans back from defaulters with very little coming back. This law allows quick bankruptcy and sale of assets while they still hold value.

There is certainly no harm in rise of billionaires if there is reasonable trickle down effect. And comparing the numbers with China is a bit apples to oranges as its a far more closed society with potentially many more unknown billionaires in the ranks of the Communist Party.