More than 40% of India’s wealth is owned by 1% people, says report

Mumbai: More than 40% of India’s wealth is owned by 1% of richest people in the country. The bottom 50% of the population only accounted for around 3% of wealth of the country.  Non-profit group Oxfam India said this in its report ‘Survival of the Richest: The India Supplement’. The report was published on the first day of the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting.

The report claimed that inequality is rising in India sharply. As per the study, the total  wealth of the 10 richest Indian stood at Rs 27.52 lakh crore in 2022. It witnessed a  rise of 32.8%  from 2021. The report also claimed that  taxing India’s 10-richest at 5% can fetch entire money to bring children back to school.

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‘A one-off tax on unrealized gains from 2017-2021 on just one billionaire, Gautam Adani, could have raised Rs 1.79 lakh crore, enough to employ more than 5 million Indian primary school teachers for a year. Taxing the top 100 Indian billionaires at 2.5%, or taxing the top 10 Indian billionaires at 5% would nearly cover the entire amount required to bring the children back into school… A one-time tax of 5% on the 10 richest billionaires in the country (Rs 1.37 lakh crore) is more than 1.5 times the funds estimated by the Health and Family Welfare Ministry (Rs 86,200 crore) and the Ministry of Ayush (Rs 3,050 crore) for the year 2022-23,’ the report said.  It also added that if India’s billionaires are taxed once at 2% on their entire wealth, it would support the requirement of Rs  40,423 crore for the nutrition of malnourished in the country for the next 3 years.

The total number of billionaires also increased in India from 102 in 2020 to 142 in 2021 and 166 in 2022. The combined wealth of India’s 100 richest has touched $660 billion (Rs 54.12 lakh crore). This  amount could fund the entire Union Budget for more than 18 months. Meanwhile, around 22.89 crore persons live in poverty in India. This is the highest in the world.

The report also claimed that the bottom 50% of the country’s population pays 6 times more on indirect taxation as a percentage of income as compared to the top 10%. Of the total taxes collected from food and non-food items, 64.3% was incurred by the bottom 50% of the population. Also,  approximately 64% of the total Rs 14.83 lakh crore in Goods and Services Tax (GST) came from bottom 50% of the population in 2021-22, with only 3% of GST coming from the top 10 per cent.