From Big Four to big ideas

THE GOVERNMENT'S CALL SHOULD BE SEEN AS A CHANCE TO REINVENT CONSULTANCY ITSELF

- AMIT KAPOOR

FARMER ONCE asked a consultant how to increase milk production.

After months of analysis and a hefty bill, the consultant’s answer was: “Assume a spherical cow.” This old punchline endures because it captures something essential about the consulting industry and its tendency to apply elegant abstractions to messy realities, often at great expense and with little practical value. For decades, global consulting giants have prospered on this dynamic by selling advice and models that dazzle on paper but falter in practice. As India now talks of creating its own “Big Four”, the challenge is not just to build large firms but also to write a new playbook that is grounded in local realities rather than spherical assumptions.

By the mid-1990s, management consulting had already exploded into a $40-billion industry employing more than 100,000 people worldwide. By 2021, estimates placed the market between $700 billion and $900 billion, with the Big Four sitting atop a pyramid of influence from Wall Street boardrooms to the offices of federal ministries. They are no longer just advisors; they are actors, shaping regulations, steering public projects, and embedding themselves so deeply in government that their withdrawal often feels impossible. This extraordinary scale explains why India’s ambition to create its own Big Four cannot be approached casually. To replicate the model is to risk importing its flaws which scholars like Mariana Mazzucato and Rosie Collington have laid bare—an industry that profits by stripping state capacity, aiding dependency, and entrenching the belief that expertise resides only in the hands of outsiders.