Poor in India ‘are unable to afford even basic necessities to survive’

Durrant Pate/Contributor

International charity organisation, Oxfam is reporting that the top one per cent of India’s population owned more than 40.5 per cent of its total wealth in 2021.

In its new report, Oxfam says that, in 2022, the number of billionaires in the country increased to 166, up from 102 in 2020. The report, titled, Survival of The Richest, was released as the World Economic Forum began in Davos, Switzerland yesterday (January 16).

In 2022, the wealth of India’s richest man, Gautam Adani, increased by 46 per cent, while the combined wealth of India’s 100 richest had touched US$660 billion.

In 2022, Adani was ranked the second richest person in the world on Bloomberg’s wealth index. He also topped the list of people whose wealth witnessed the maximum rise globally during the year.

In the meantime, Oxfam is highlighting that the poor in India “are unable to afford even basic necessities to survive”.

The report pinpointed the large disparity in wealth distribution in India, saying that more than 40 per cent of the wealth created in the country from 2012 to 2021 had gone to just one per cent of the population while only three per cent had trickled down to the bottom 50 per cent.

Levy a wealth tax on the ultra-rich

The charity is calling on India’s finance minister to levy a wealth tax on the ultra-rich to tackle this “obscene” inequality, citing that the country’s poor and middle class were taxed more than the rich.

Oxfam states that approximately 64 per cent of the total goods and services tax in the country came from the bottom 50 per cent of the population, while only four per cent came from the top 10 per cent.

Commenting on the report, Oxfam India CEO Amitabh Behar contended that “India is unfortunately on a fast track to becoming a country only for the rich”.

Behar added: “The country’s marginalised – Dalits, Adivasis, Muslims, women and informal sector workers are continuing to suffer in a system which ensures the survival of the richest.”

The report details how the rich in India currently benefit from reduced corporate taxes, tax exemptions and other incentives. To correct this disparity, the charity asked the finance minister to implement progressive tax measures such as wealth tax in the upcoming budget.

According to the report, a two per cent tax on the entire wealth of India’s billionaires would support the nutrition of the country’s malnourished population for the next three years while a one per cent wealth tax could fund the National Health Mission, India’s largest healthcare scheme, for more than 1.5 years. Taxing the top 100 Indian billionaires at 2.5 per cent, or taxing the top 10 Indian billionaires at five per cent, would nearly cover the entire amount required to bring an estimated 150 million children back into school, Oxfam reports.

For her part, Oxfam International Executive Director Gabriela Bucher responded: “It’s time we demolish the convenient myth that tax cuts for the richest result in their wealth somehow ‘trickling down’ to everyone else”.

Taxing the super-rich was necessary for “reducing inequality and resuscitating democracy”, she added.