In the wake of the alleged murder of Ketan Agarwal at Pune’s Lohagad Fort, India finds itself trapped in a bizarrely predictable ritual. Before the law can even dissect the forensic evidence, public intellectuals rush to dissect our culture.
A recent commentary recasts an allegedly meticulous, months-long plot of deception culminating in homicide as the tragic byproduct of overbearing Indian parents, restrictive family expectations and the “tacky” culture of small-and-medium enterprise (SME) business families.
Such narratives represent a deeply biased and intellectually lazy view in their attempt to launder premeditated violence through the passive voice of societal oppression.
By reducing a horrific crime to a symptom of ‘regressive family businesses,’ they do a grave disservice to three distinct realities: the gravity of the crime itself, the broader socio-economic circumstances facing Indian youth and the diverse fabric of India’s business communities, especially their next generation.
The argument suffers from an irreconcilable internal contradiction. On one hand, the alleged actions of Siya Goyal in this case are acknowledged to be outliers. On the other hand, the very same case is used to indict an entire socio-economic class, painting traditional business families as hollow, vanity-obsessed patriarchies parading their children like ‘trophy cattle.’
This is a stereotype masquerading as analysis. To suggest that a 20-year-old allegedly orchestrated a murder, extracted nearly ₹1 crore from her fiancé under the guise of wedding shopping and diverted it to her boyfriend simply because she “hesitated to bring shame to her parents,” as one oped said, represents a spectacular leap in logic.
There is a vast, unbridgeable chasm between hiding a relationship from one’s parents and allegedly pushing a human being off a 400-foot cliff. Millions of young Indians bear restrictive, conservative and sometimes stifling family environments every day without resorting to homicide.
To blur the line between a lack of personal agency and the alleged commission of a calculated crime is both dangerous and deeply offensive to millions who choose to exercise moral responsibility over violence.
Further, the attempt to isolate this pathology within families running “boring businesses,” with sanitary tiles, steel commodity parts and chemical plants cited as examples, also betrays a profound misunderstanding of contemporary India.
The crisis of youthful agency and parental overreach is not a boutique affliction peculiar to the wealthy mercantile class, but a defining and painful feature of the Indian youth experience across socio-economic strata.
Time spent by Indian youth in coaching hubs like Kota to prepare for engineering entrance or the UPSC exam may easily be attributed to societal and parental expectations. Emotional manipulation, financial dependency and the crushing weight of ‘log kya kahenge’ (what will people say) are structural realities across India.
If we ghettoize this systemic issue into a business-family phenomenon, we miss the broader struggle of an entire generation trying to forge independent identities against steep odds.
Perhaps the most malicious trope is the characterization of children from business families as soft, unmotivated dependents who never learn business properly and live entirely on Daddy’s money.
This caricature ignores the foundational reality of the Indian economy. SMEs are the literal backbone of India’s GDP and employment. The transition of family businesses from one generation to the next, instead of being a simple story of inherited luxury, is often a gruelling exercise in economic survival and inter-generational negotiation.
Evidence from India’s business families paints a starkly different picture from the stereotype of entitled heirs. The next generation of these families is performing an extraordinarily complex tightrope walk.
Driven by a deep love for their families and an acute understanding of organizational expectations, they constantly balance respect for heritage with the need for innovation, professionalization and growth.
This is the cohort challenging the old Western adage of “shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations”—the grim prophecy that the founder builds, the second generation preserves and the third squanders.
Across India, successors to so-called ‘boring businesses’ are professionalizing legacy operations while building or funding new-age startups through family offices.
Children born into business families often shoulder immense expectations from a young age to sustain the livelihoods not just of their own families, but those of their employees as well. They cannot be typified as a monolith of heirdom. To demand that they “stand up to their elders” by abandoning family enterprises ignores the complex economics of familial duty, capital preservation and respect for the elders who built these businesses.
Confronting India’s generational divide, the toxic elements of its matchmaking apparatus and the garish excess of destination weddings are all valid conversations. But they must be conducted on their own merits, not used as an explanation for alleged murderer.
When a horrific crime is committed, the accused needs a fair trial without anyone trying to rationalize it. Shifting focus from individual accountability to parental expectations, wedding budgets and inherited businesses only provides a cultural alibi for the unjustifiable. Stop blaming family businesses for failures of human conscience.
These are the author’s personal views.
The author is professor, economics, and executive director, Centre for Family Business & Entrepreneurship at Bhavan’s SPJIMR.