India's richest 1% now own more than 40% of the country's total wealth. Oxfam has given this information in one of its recently released reports. In this study, Oxfam has also told that half of the country's population i.e. 50% has only 3% of India's total wealth.
Releasing the India Supplement to its Annual Inequality Report on the first day of the World Economic Forum's annual meeting, rights group Oxfam International said a 5% tax on India's 10 richest people could fully fund the schooling of all the country's children.
Oxfam said, 'Only one billionaire Gautam Adani can get Rs 1.79 lakh crore from a one-time tax on unrealized gains between 2017 and 2021. With this money, 5 million i.e. 50 lakh Indian primary school teachers can be given salary for one year.
Oxfam has titled its report 'Survival of the Richest: The India Story'. In the report, Oxfam further said, 'If India's billionaires were taxed once on their total wealth at the rate of 2%, it would meet the need of Rs 40,423 crore to nourish the malnourished people in the country for the next three years. can go.
According to the report, a one-time tax of 5% on the country's 10 richest billionaires can raise Rs 1.37 lakh crore, which will be shared between the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (Rs 86,200 crore) and the Ministry of AYUSH (Rs 3,050 crore) for 2020-2023. 1.5 times more than the estimated funds.
The report on Gender in Equality states that female workers get only 63 paise for every Re 1 earned by a male worker. The difference is even greater for scheduled cast and rural workers. The Scheduled Castes earned 55% of the earnings of the social groups, and subsequently only half of the urban earnings between 2018 and 2019.
A 2.5% tax on the top-100 Indian billionaires and a 5% tax on the top-10 would provide almost the entire amount needed to get children back to school. Oxfam said the report blends qualitative and quantitative information to explore the impact of inequality in India.
Secondary sources such as Forbes and Credit Suisse have been used to look at wealth inequality in the country and the wealth of billionaires. While government sources like NSS, Union Budget documents, parliamentary questions etc. have been used to corroborate the arguments made through the report.
Oxfam said that billionaires in India have seen their wealth grow by 121% or Rs 3,608 crore per day since the start of the pandemic till November 2022. On the other hand, about 64% of the total Rs 14.83 lakh crore in Goods and Services Tax (GST) came from 50% of the population in 2021-22. On the other hand, only 3% of GST was received from the top-10.
