The global financial press, those tireless stenographers for the billionaire class, are currently vibrating with excitement over India’s ‘IPO boom.’ We are told it is a sign of a ‘maturing’ economy, a ‘bright spot’ in a world that otherwise looks like a hospice ward for dead ideologies. But if you have spent more than five minutes observing the human capacity for self-delusion, you know that ‘boom’ is usually just the sound a bubble makes right before it coats the room in expensive debris. This isn’t an economic miracle; it’s a high-stakes game of hot potato played with the life savings of a desperate middle class.

India, a nation where infrastructure is often more of a suggestion than a reality and where the air in the major cities is thick enough to be used as a construction material, is now being framed as the new frontier of financial sophistication. The Bombay Stock Exchange is suddenly the hottest ticket in town, with a record-breaking number of companies rushing to list. Why the rush? Because the people at the top—the venture capitalists and the founders of money-hemorrhaging tech startups—can see the writing on the wall. They know that the window for selling overpriced vapour to the public is closing, and they are sprinting for the exit.

Let’s look at the ‘investment fuel’ these IPOs are supposedly providing. In a sane world, a stock market serves to channel capital into productive enterprises—factories, innovation, infrastructure. In the current reality, it’s a mechanism for the ‘democratization of risk.’ This is a polite way of saying that the people who actually built these companies are unloading their bags onto retail investors who believe they are buying a piece of the future. In reality, they are buying a piece of a subsidized fantasy. These are tech firms that ‘disrupt’ the economy by losing five dollars for every dollar they earn, hoping to make it up in volume or, more accurately, hoping to survive long enough to dump their shares on someone even more gullible.

The Indian government, of course, is preening. For a political class that has failed to generate meaningful industrial employment or fix the agrarian crisis, the stock market is a gift. It provides a shiny, numerical distraction. As long as the Sensex is green, they can claim the economy is ‘roaring,’ even as the actual citizens are roaring with frustration at the lack of basic services. It’s the ‘Shining India’ narrative 2.0, now with more digital apps and less substance. If you can’t give the people bread, give them a brokerage account and a dream of becoming a billionaire through a delivery app IPO.

There is a deep, acid-drenched irony in India speed-running the exact same neoliberal failures that have hollowed out the West. While the United States and the EU are currently grappling with the terminal decay of their own speculative bubbles, India is leaning in, doubling down on the idea that wealth can be conjured out of thin air through financial engineering. It is the ‘aspirational’ middle class that will pay the price. These are people who have been told that the old ways of saving are for losers and that the real money is in the market. They are entering a casino where the house not only owns the cards but also writes the laws.

Historically, these frenzies follow a predictable trajectory. First comes the hype, fueled by breathless reporting and celebrity endorsements. Then comes the ‘new era’ thinking, where traditional metrics like ‘profit’ and ‘revenue’ are dismissed as relics of a boring past. Then comes the entry of the ‘retail investor’—the schoolteacher, the small business owner, the clerk—who buys in at the peak. Finally, the deleveraging event occurs. The smart money has already left the building, the valuations collapse, and the ‘miracle’ is revealed to be a simple transfer of wealth from the bottom to the top.

We are currently in the ‘new era’ phase. We are being told that India’s growth is different, that its digital stack makes it immune to the gravity that eventually grounds every other economy. It’s a lovely story. It’s also complete nonsense. The laws of physics and economics are not waived because you have a fancy UPI interface. You cannot build a sustainable superpower on the backs of loss-making startups and speculative fever. But why let reality spoil the party? The bankers are getting their fees, the founders are getting their mansions, and the politicians are getting their talking points. The only ones left in the cold will be the people who actually believed the headlines. But then again, humanity’s primary export has always been its own stupidity, and in that regard, the Indian IPO boom is a roaring success.