5% of Indians hold 60% of country’s wealth: Oxfam
- ByStartupStory | January 17, 2023
According to Oxfam, an anti-poverty non-governmental organisation, the wealth of the top 5% of Indians accounted for more than 60% of the country’s wealth in the last two years.
The report, titled “Survival of the Richest: The India Story,” was released on the first day of the World Economic Forum. According to the report, between April 2020 and November 2022, the wealth of India’s billionaires increased by 121%, or 3,608 crore per day. According to the report, the top 10% of Indians paid only 3% in goods and services tax in 2021-2022. (GST). This contrasts with the payment of 64% of GST worth 14.83 lakh crore by 50% of the country’s population and 33% of GST by the middle 44%.
The development comes at a time when the country’s unemployment rate reached a 12-month high of 8.3% in December last year, according to data from the Centre for Monitoring the Indian Economy (CMIE).
According to the report, India’s total number of billionaires increased from 102 in 2020 to 166 in 2022. According to the report, the top two industries crowded the most by Indian billionaires are healthcare and manufacturing. The manufacturing industry has 31 billionaires, while the healthcare industry has 32 billionaires. The healthcare and pharmaceutical industries added seven new billionaires in 2020, with their combined wealth reaching 4.3 lakh crore by early 2021.
According to the report, Gautam Adani, the Adani group chairmanwealth ,’s increased eight times during the pandemic and then nearly doubled to 10.96 lakh crore in October 2022, making him the richest Indian. Cyrus Poonawala, chairman and managing director of the Cyrus Poonawala group, saw his wealth increase by 91% starting in 2021.
Amitabh Behar, the chief executive officer of Oxfam India says, “The number of hungry Indians increased to 350 million in 2022 from 190 million in 2018. The widespread hunger is resulting in 65% of the deaths among children under the age of five in 2022, according to the Union Government’s submission to the Supreme Court. After witnessing mass suffering and death during the COVID-19 pandemic, it was critical that the Government of India took aggressive measures to address injustice and poverty.”
Gabriela Bucher, executive director of Oxfam International says, “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 is the strategic precondition to reducing inequality and resuscitating democracy. We need to do this for innovation. For stronger public services. For happier and healthier societies.”
According to the report, the wealth of India’s top ten richest people will be worth 27.52 lakh crore in 2022, a 32.8% increase from 2021. According to the report, the combined wealth of India’s top 100 has reached 54.12 lakh crore. In contrast, the report claims that the country still has the highest number of poor people, with 22.9 crore.
The report, which focuses on corporate taxation, claims that a reduction in the corporate tax slab from 30% to 22% in 2019 has resulted in a total loss of 1.84 lakh crore over the last two years. Amid rising wealth inequality, corporate profits increased by 70% in 2021-22 compared to the previous year, while income fell for 84% of Indian households, according to the report.
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