At Mumbai's domestic airport, a reflexology parlour - which offers 30-minute foot massages for Rs 950 - employs visually-impaired masseurs from lower-income backgrounds. They make their way around using a chair-numbering system, use a speaking clock to keep track of massage time, and converse in polite English - symbols of the chaotic junction where indulgence and indigence converge in the city. Mumbai is no stranger to luxury goods and services, just as it carries the dubious distinction of being the most unequal city in the world. According to a recent housing index compiled using 63 markets by Knight Frank and income estimates of the CIA for purchasing-power parity in 2011, a 100-sq-m luxury residence in Mumbai costs about $1.14 million, which would take an average Indian over three centuries to earn. In comparison, the average Moscow resident needs 144 years of income to buy an upmarket apartment in her own city, Singaporeans only 43. Given the absurd polarity in disposable income in our society , luxury and poverty make for strange bedfellows. There's the Rs 3.69-crore Lamborghini riding alongside the Rs 1.5-lakh Nano.
 
There's a 14-course, Rs 20,000-per-head meal in a Delhi restaurant that would make any Vidarbha farmer wonder if he was on another planet. And yet, despite the seeming injustice, luxury can, and does, lend a hand in generating jobs. Ironically, the very exclusivity that helps luxury goods and services demand a premium price becomes an inclusive exercise for a society in the long term. Indian fashion is an obvious case in point. Vidhi Singhania, wife of Nidhipati Singhania of JK Industries, was driven to give traditional handcrafted textiles a luxury label, "We're so brand conscious, even Hermes could sell us a sari," she says wryly. Having mobilised communities of weavers, tailors and embroiderers from Kota (Rajasthan) and Varanasi (UP), she offers design inputs and innovative techniques in return for export-worthy quality of finished garments for her posh Delhi store. Award-winning textile exponent Pranavi Kapur has also worked tirelessly to keep khadi alive in remote village communities of northern India and trendy in the city. Despite the occasional tale of designers misusing the rural craftsperson's desperation, there are many others genuinely interested in creating a win-win situation.
 
Mass-premium lifestyle stores like Fabindia and Mother Earth have already exemplified how well-directed entrepreneur canny can connect disempowered rural labour with quality-conscious city shoppers. With the luxury market, the link only gets more extensive. Besides the first-point producers, there are the distributor-partners in high-end malls , scores of sales staff, supplementary services such as chauffeur-driven after-sales support, consultants to manage our government's infamous mood swings and an army of public relations professionals to ensure media coverage. There are magazines driven by luxury advertisers looking to woo India's growing list of high-net-worth individuals, and extraordinary opportunities for small and medium businesses to create a luxury environment for those who aspire to superior, branded services.