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THE INEQUALITY EPIDEMIC
What the article is about?
- Talks about the state of inequality and way ahead for India.
Syllabus: GS-III Issues relating growth and development, Inclusive Growth
Inequality status:
- Rich:
- In 2021, the number of billionaires in India expanded by 39%
- India is home today to the largest number of dollar billionaires after US and China
- In 2020, 98 families held more wealth than 555 million Indians
- India’s top 10% owned 45% of the country’s wealth
- 3/5th of India’s top 100 added $1 billion or more to their wealth in 20201 over the previous year
- Poor:
- 84% of Indian households suffered a fall of income, many into deep and stubborn poverty
- 120 million jobs were lost, of which 92 million were in the informal sector
- In 2021, FAO reported 200 million undernourished people in India and India was home to a quarter of all undernourished people
- The number of poor people in India doubled from 55 million in 2020 to 120 million in 2021
- Oxfam- daily-wage workers topped the numbers of people who commode suicide in 2020, followed by self-employed and unemployed individuals.
- A greater part of the from economic devastation in India – deaths, joblessness, hunger – is not caused primarily by the Covid-19 pandemic.
- They are the consequences of market-led public policies that have fostered unequal life chances.
- India spends only 3.54% of its budgetary resources on healthcare, much less than middle-income countries like Brazil(9.51%), South Africa(8.25%) and China(5.35)-Oxfam.
- Regressive taxation is burdening the poor and abysmally low public spending limiting progress.
Way Ahead:
- The starting point of our vision of a new India is for the state to assume responsibility to provide quality healthcare, education, food pension, clean water and housing, free or affordable ways for all citizens.
- India Exclusion Report by the Centre for Equity Studies says that to resource all of this would demand a public resolve to expand taxation of the super-rich.
- Two taxes levied only on the top 1% of the population:
- Wealth tax of 2%
- Inheritance tax of 33%
- Two taxes levied only on the top 1% of the population:
- The struggle of our times must be for a new social contract based on solidarity and inclusion.
