India, May 2 -- There's a gated complex in Bengaluru so wealthy, it doesn't even bother with a nameplate on the outside.

The villas here are astronomically priced, relative to the rest of this city. Prices start at Rs.30 crore. Because this isn't merely real-estate. It is entry into a parallel India: one that flies private, to the Maldives, for the weekend, and sends children off to Ivy League schools with the nonchalance of a middle-class father asking his son to fetch a carton of milk.

Statistically, this kind of wealth is supremely rare in India. Numerically, there are enough people in this sliver of the economy to outnumber every citizen of Iceland 2-to-1.

That's what we often miss about the Indian economy. Every slice is so vast a...