‘Dystopian future’: Sanjeev Bikhchandani compares Elon Musk's influence on US govt to India's colonial history
Sanjeev Bikhchandani said that Musk's influence on the US government would not have a good outcome and that the US is headed to a dystopian future.
Entrepreneur Sanjeev Bikhchandani has said that the US is headed to a dystopian future because of the 'influence' of billionaire Elon Musk on the country's government.
Comparing the situation to the colonial history of India, Bikhchandani wrote in a post on X that, “almost three hundred years ago India and Indians witnessed and experienced the negative impact of a private company taking over a country, a people and a government.”
“The US is going through shades of that now given the influence that Elon Musk is wielding in and over the US administration,” he wrote. “This will not have a good outcome. The US is headed to a dystopian future.”
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The post by Bikhchandani, the founder of InfoEdge which owns Naukri.com, has gotten nearly 150,000 views.
Bikhchandani is also he founder of real estate platform 99acres.com, matrimonial site Jeevansathi.com, and education site Shiksha.com. He also co-founded Ashoka University and is an investor, having backed PolicyBazaar and Zomato which are now unicorns.
Elon Musk as head of DOGE
His comments come at a time when Musk, the world's richest person with a net worth of $398 billion heads the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) which is aimed to cut government spending.
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Bikhchandani's post highlights the potential conflicts of interest that could arise from this, with Musk also heading several prominent companies such as Tesla, social media platform X, artificial intelligence (AI) startup xAI, and SpaceX, among others.
Bikhchandani went on to say that such a person should either be in government or as the CEO of those companies, but not both at the same time.
“He cannot be meeting visiting Prime Ministers as a private company CEO advocating his interests on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and be in government heading DOGE on Tuesday and Thursday," he added. "Pick one.”
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He went on to add that “such a thing would never happen in India” and that “you would never have the founder promoter and CEO of a listed company be a Cabinet Minister three days a week and be discharging his or her duties in the company two days a week.”
Because of this, “India seems to be better governed than the USA” in this aspect, he added.
However, Devendra Agrawal, the founder of Dexter Capital Advisors responded to the post, stating that though he agreed with what Bikhchandani meant, the argument of India not having prominent business people in government is not accurate.
For this, he cited the examples of Former Minister and entrepreneur Rajeev Chandrashekar and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu, who had founded Heritage foods in 1994 when he was a revenue minister of the Andhra Pradesh government back then.