The Indian government informed parliament recently that the number of taxpayers with a declared annual income above Rs 100 crore (Rs 1 billion, equivalent to just over US$ 10 million, or € 9 million at current exchange rates) rose four times in five years, from 142 in 2021-22 to 576 in the 2025-26 fiscal year, the most visible sign of one of the worst cases of economic inequality in the world.
The Ministry's data
The Ministry of Finance provided the figure in response to a parliamentary question in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of the Indian parliament, about the number of billionaires in the country.
The ministry noted that the data provided do not concern an individual's total wealth, but only their declared annual income, highlighting a significant information gap, i.e. the absence of official data on the estimated aggregate wealth of Indian billionaires because the Wealth Tax Act, the law that imposed a wealth tax, was repealed in 2016.
Anyone wishing to measure the wealth of India's super-rich, not just income, has to rely on private data.
At the same time, the ministry provided other government data, indicating a decline in the Gini coefficient, which measures the distribution of a variable (such as income or wealth) as a number between 0 (perfect equality) and 1 (absolute inequality).
According to the government, the figure is decreasing, going from 0.266 at the rural level and 0.314 at the urban level in 2022-23 to 0.237 and 0.284 respectively in 2023-24. These coefficients, however, are based on consumption, not wealth, so once again they offer a partial picture.
How many super-rich Indians are there?
Estimates from available private sources converge on rapid growth at the top end of the Indian wealth pyramid.
According to an April study by real estate consultancy Knight Frank, India currently has 207 dollar billionaires and over 19,850 ultra-high-net-worth individuals (UHNWIs), a category the firm defines as those with assets worth at least Rs 287 crore (about US$ 30 million, or € 26 million).
The study predicts that by 2031, India will have 313 billionaires and more than 25,200 UHNWIs.
The Hurun Global Rich List 2026, published in March, ranks India third in the world for the number of billionaires after the United States and China, with 308 individuals, 57 new entries in the last year compared to 27 departures. The overall wealth of Indian billionaires surveyed by Hurun grew 10 per cent year-over-year, by approximately 112.6 trillion rupees (just over US$ 1.176 trillion, or approximately € 1.024 trillion).
Mukesh Ambani, chairman of Reliance Industries, remains the richest Indian and the richest Asian, with an estimated net worth of US$ 109 billion; Gautam Adani, of the Adani Group, is second, despite a 14 per cent drop in his wealth over the last year.
The data signal a generational shift with more than 80 per cent of the billionaires on the 2026 list absent ten years ago. The sector that produced the newest entries is the healthcare and pharmaceutical.
A third study, by 360 ONE Wealth Management, offers a broader and, in some ways, more socially significant picture. The sample analysed includes 3,040 people with a minimum net worth of 425 crore rupees (around US$ 44 million, € 39 million), for a total group wealth of 104 trillion rupees (approximately US$ 1,087 billion).
The most significant finding concerns age. The median age of the crorepati (those with assets exceeding Rs 1 crore) fell to 57 in 2026, from 63 the previous year, while the median age of the Indian population as a whole rose to 29.
The richest members of Generation Z and Millennials have an average wealth of Rs 5,094 crore (about US$ 532 million), higher even than the average of the "silent generation" (those over 80), a sign that wealth accumulation is being concentrated in an increasingly narrow and younger age group, while the rest of the population ages.
The other side of the coin: one of the highest levels of inequality in the world
The surge in super-incomes in recent years is part of a trend documented by multiple independent sources. The World Inequality Report 2026 ranks India among the most unequal countries in the world.
According to the report, the richest 1 per cent holds 40 per cent of the national wealth, while the richest 10 per cent holds approximately 65 per cent. On the income front, the richest 10 per cent gets about 58 per cent of the country’s income, compared to just 15 per cent for the poorest half of the population, a gap that remained essentially stable between 2014 and 2024.
Previous work by the same research laboratory reconstructed a century of data on Indian inequality, concluding that the concentration of wealth in the country today is higher than under British colonial rule. The authors coined the term Billionaire Raj for this reason.
The Wealth Tracker India 2026, a study released on 1 April by the nonprofit think tank Centre for Financial Accountability as part of its "Tax The Top" campaign, confirms this trend.
The five richest families in India saw their wealth grow by 400 per cent between 2019 and 2025, while the share of national wealth held by the poorest half of the population remained stagnant at 6.4 per cent in 2024.
Oxfam, which publishes annual analyses on the topic, offers a more explicitly political interpretation of the phenomenon.
In a 2023 report, the NGO estimated that the richest 1 per cent owned over 40 per cent of India's wealth, compared to just 3 per cent held by the poorest half of the population, equivalent to approximately 700 million people.
Another Oxfam report, released in January 2025 on the occasion of the Davos Economic Forum, estimated that approximately 60 per cent of the wealth of billionaires worldwide comes not from entrepreneurial activity, but from inheritance, monopoly positions, or favourable relationships with political power, so-called crony capitalism.
Inequality by political choice
In most studies, inequality is not treated as a natural occurrence, but the result of reversible political choices: first and foremost, the failure to tax large fortunes, following the abolition of the Indian wealth tax in 2016, coupled with an indirect tax system that places a proportionate burden on lower income groups.
The World Inequality Report estimates that a 3 per cent global tax on fewer than 100,000 millionaires and billionaires would generate over US$ 750 billion annually, a figure comparable to the combined education budgets of all low- and middle-income countries in the world.
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