40.5% of Indian wealth in the hands of the richest 1%
Oxfam's report presented at the World Economic Forum in Davos highlights the increase in economic inequality over the pandemic period. "If Indian billionaires were taxed at a rate of 2% of their total wealth it would support the feeding of malnourished people in the country for the next three years".
Mumbai (AsiaNews) - The richest 1% of the Indian population holds over 40.5% of the country's wealth, while the 50% in the lowest income bracket holds just 3% of the total wealth.
These are the figures for India for the year 2021 from the Inequality Report released annually by Oxfam International on the occasion of the ongoing World Economic Forum in Davos. The survey cross-references reports from sources such as Forbes and Credit Suisse on large assets with official documents on the Indian Union budget.
According to this study, since the beginning of the pandemic, Indian billionaires have seen their wealth increase by 121%, or 36 billion rupees per day (more than 400 million euros). If one widens the view to the 5% of Indians with the highest incomes, the share of wealth owned rises to 60%.
The report states that if the wealth of the 10 richest people in India were taxed at 5 per cent, the entire amount of money needed to tackle the problem of school drop-outs could be raised. It adds: 'A one-off tax on the earnings from 2017 to 2021 of a single billionaire, Gautam Adani (one of the world's richest men ed), would raise .79 billion, enough to hire more than five million Indian primary school teachers for a year.
The 'Survival of the Richest' report also found that if Indian billionaires were taxed even once at a rate of two per cent of their total wealth, this would result in 404.23 billion rupees (more than 4.5 billion euro) that would support the feeding of malnourished people in the country for the next three years.
The report also talks about gender inequality: female workers earn only 63 cents for every rupee earned by male workers. Moreover, the difference is even starker for the classified castes and rural workers: the former earn only 55 per cent of what the advantaged groups earn, while the latter earn only half as much as urban earners in 2018-19.
Indian economist Kaushik Basu, former chief economist of the World Bank, tweeted: "Oxfam's latest annual report is disturbing. There has been a sharp rise in inequality over the last two years. We need fiscal policy to reverse this trend"
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18/07/2022 13:02
