World Poverty Alleviation Charity; According to Oxfam, the total number of billionaires in India has increased from 102 in 2020 to 166 in 2022.
Davos: India’s richest one per cent now owns more than 40 per cent of the world’s wealth, a new study showed on Monday, compared to just 3 per cent for half the population.
Rights organization Oxfam International claims that a 5% tax on India’s top ten earners would generate enough income to send all children back to school. The statement was made during the release of the India Supplement to the Annual Inequality Report on the opening day of the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum.
It added, “Just one billionaire Gautam Adani can collect a lump sum tax of ₹1.79 lakh crore on his unrealized profits from 2017-2021, enough to hire more than 50 lakh Indian primary school teachers for a year.”
According to the report titled “Survival of the Richest”, if India’s billionaires paid a single tax of 2% on all their money, it would provide the country with Rs 40,423 crore needed to feed its malnourished citizens for the next three years. .
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According to findings of a report on gender inequality, women workers earn only 63 paise for every rupee earned by a male worker.
This disparity is more pronounced for SC and rural workers; The former earned 55% of what privileged socio-economic groups earned, while urban workers earned only 50% between 2018 and 2019.
Oxfam called the report a combination of qualitative and quantitative data to explore the impact of inequality in India.
While government sources like NSS, Union Budget documents, parliamentary questions etc. are used to support the claims made throughout the research, secondary sources like Forbes and Credit Suisse have been used to examine wealth inequality and billionaire wealth in the nation.
Oxfam India CEO Amitabh Behar said, “The country’s marginalized – Dalits, tribals, Muslims, women and informal sector workers – are suffering under a system that ensures the survival of the richest.
Moreover, the poor spend more on essential goods and services than the rich and pay disproportionately higher taxes. It is time to tax the rich and make sure they pay their fair share,” Behar said.
Behar has urged the Union Finance Minister to introduce progressive tax measures such as wealth tax and inheritance tax, which he said have historically proven effective in tackling inequality.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by HW News staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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