Report Shows 40.5% of India’s Wealth is Owned by the Rich (1%)

According to a report by Oxfam, in 2021, India’s top 1% of the population owned more than 40.5% of the total wealth.

The report further stated that the number of billionaires in India increased to 166 in 2022 from 102 in 2020.

The charity organization also mentioned that the poor in India were unable to afford necessities to survive.

 The report, titled “Survival of The Richest,” was released as the World Economic Forum began in Davos, Switzerland, and it highlighted the significant disparity in wealth distribution in India, stating that more than 40% of the wealth created in the country from 2012 to 2021 went to just 1% of the population, while only 3% trickled down to the bottom 50%.

The report also noted that the wealth of India’s richest man, Gautam Adani, increased by 46% in 2022, and the combined wealth of India’s 100 richest reached $660 billion.

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Oxfam called on India’s finance minister to impose a wealth tax on the ultra-rich to address this “obscene” inequality.

 Additionally, the report pointed out that the country’s people whose income is below the poverty threshold and middle-class were taxed more than the rich, and approximately 64% of the total goods and services tax (GST) in the country came from the bottom 50% of the population, while only 4% came from the top 10%.

“India is unfortunately on a fast track to becoming a country only for the rich,” Oxfam India CEO Amitabh Behar said. “The country’s marginalized – Dalits, Adivasis, Muslims, women and informal sector workers are continuing to suffer in a system which ensures the survival of the richest.”

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 an estimated 150 million children back into school, Oxfam said.

“It’s time we demolish the convenient myth that tax cuts for the richest result in their wealth somehow ‘trickling down’ to everyone else,” said Gabriela Bucher, the executive director of Oxfam International.

A 2% tax on the entire wealth of India’s billionaires would support the nutrition of the country’s malnourished population for the next three years, the report said.

A 1% wealth tax could fund the National Health Mission, India’s largest healthcare scheme for more than1.5 years, it added.