India, Aug. 13 -- The French economist, Thomas Piketty, often described as the 21st century Karl Marx, has a large fan following in India because of his views on wealth inequalities. One reason is the following factoid that is startling by all accounts: it was rumoured that the projected salary of the CEO of IT major Cognizant last year was more than Rs 137 crore a year. As per reports filed with the US SEC, Ravi Kumar earned Rs 70 crore. Even the latter figure, although significantly lower than the rumours, is 376 times the median salary at Cognizant.

Another IT giant, TCS, recently faced backlash when it decided to "sack" about 12,000 employees. There was talk of Indian companies following the US model, where CEOs earn hundreds of mill...