Achi news desk-
GUWAHATI: A recent report by the Global Inequality Database has revealed that wealth inequality in India has reached staggering heights, even surpassing the days of British colonial rule in the country.
The report, titled “Income and Wealth Inequality in India, 1922-2023: The Rise of the Billionaire Raj”, highlighted income inequality between 2014 and 2023 and revealed that India’s wealth gap has risen to its highest historical levels, with the country’s richest 1% dominating at 40.1% of the national income, which was the highest in the world.
The report stated that although inequality in India declined in India after independence until the early 1980s, it again began to rise in the mid-1980s and skyrocketed since the early 2000s.
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“Between 2014-15 and 2022-23, the rise in top inequality is particularly pronounced in terms of wealth concentration. By 2022-23, the income and wealth share of the top 1% (22.6% and 40.1%) are at their highest historical levels, and The top 1% income in India is one of the highest in the world, ahead of countries like South Africa, Brazil and the USA,” the report further emphasized.
The report also revealed that growth in average income in India remained slow throughout the years and that compared to a real growth rate of 1.6% per year between 1960 and 1990, average income in India grew by 3.6% between 1990 and 2022. , with the periods 2005- 2010 and 2010-2015 witnessed the fastest growth of 4.3% and 4.9% respectively.
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Compared to China and Vietnam, whose average income was similar to India in 1975, the average income in the two Asian countries increased by 35%-50% of that of India by 2000. China’s average income today is 2.5 times greater than India’s. Income, while the average income in Vietnam is about 33% higher than that of India, despite the lack of democracy in both countries.
The report went on to state that “the Indian income tax system may be regressive when viewed through the lens of net wealth,” and suggested restructuring the tax code to address both income and wealth, along with large-scale public investments in health, education and nutrition.
The report further stated that a 2% “surtax” on the net wealth of the 167 richest families in 2022-2023 would yield 0.5% of national income in revenue and create valuable fiscal space to facilitate such investments.
The paper said the actual level of inequality may be higher because the quality of economic data in India was “particularly poor,” while the new estimates “represent a lower bound on actual levels of inequality.”
