THE Global Inequality Report 2022, released last week, has confirmed what common people were painfully aware of – the rich have become richer and the poor have become even poorer. The report has marshalled an enormous amount of data from countries across the world to reveal that the richest 2,750 billionaires now own 3.5 per cent of world’s wealth while the poorest 388 crore people of the world (50 per cent of world’s population) own a mere 2 per cent of global wealth.

Unsurprisingly, data from India follows the global trend. The richest 10 per cent of the population – all the Tatas, Birlas, Ambanis, Adanis, etc – own a whopping 65 per cent of wealth while the poorest 50 per cent are owners of a mere 6 per cent. This is wealth in terms of various assets like property, shares, cash, etc. Income – that is, earnings in a year – follows a similar pattern. The richest 10 per cent gobbled up 57 per cent of the total income generated in India in 2022-21 while the bottom 50 per cent had to live with just 13 per cent.

The report is an annual publication brought out by the Paris-based World Inequality Lab, founded by economist Thomas Piketty in 2018.

GROWING INEQUALITY

The researchers have collected data for over a hundred years and conclusively shown that there has been a decisive deepening of inequality in both wealth ownership and income since the world became dominated by neoliberal economic policies, which included globalisation and integration of all economies, easing of domestic regulations, increased privatisation and cutting down of government expenditures on welfare.

In India, the results of these policies are crystal clear, as the two graphs below show.

In 1991, when neoliberal policies were comprehensively adopted in India, 51 per cent of wealth was owned by the richest 10 per cent of the population while the poorest 50 per cent people owned just 9 per cent of total wealth. By 2021, the rich segment’s wealth had increased to 65 per cent while the poorest had to suffice with just 6 per cent. The super rich segment garnered 35 per cent of income in 1991 while the poorest 50 per cent managed with 20 per cent of the income share. This had skewed by 2021 to 57 per cent of income being grabbed by the rich with the poorest half were now having to settle for just 13 per cent of the income generated in the country.

Recall that the whole package of neoliberal policies was lauded continuously by governments and their apologist economists as one that will bring prosperity all round. It was argued that the prosperity of “wealth creators”, as prime minister Narendra Modi often calls the top industrial tycoons and the bourgeoisie in general, will cause a ‘trickle down’ of wealth downwards to the less advantaged sections of people, the industrial workers, the peasants and farm labourers, the informal sector workers, the lower middle class, etc. It was piously urged that giving concessions to these “wealth creators” in the form of tax cuts, loan write offs, easy credit, cheaper land and electricity, less bureaucratic hassles, will open the flood gates of investment, production and employment, leading to a general era of well-being and abundance. PM Modi had a special phrase for it –achhe din, meaning good times.

The results of this grand hoax are there for all to see now. Under this neoliberal regime, which is supported by most bourgeois parties in India, working people of all classes have been mercilessly ground down, their labour only used to fill the overflowing coffers of the rich.

UNDER MODI, RICHEST 1 PER CENT ARE BIGGEST BENEFICIARIES

An interesting aspect of India’s inequality under Narendra Modi’s aggressively pro-rich regime is that the maximum benefit has accrued to the richest 1 per cent of population – the real super elites, who are often seen hobnobbing with the prime minister or his colleagues in the cabinet, rubbing shoulders with him in “investor summits” and accompanying him to global elite conferences like the World Economic Forum in Davos.

The World Inequality Report reveals that the wealth of these richest 1 per cent of India increased fastest in the seven years of Modi’s rule. Their wealth jumped up by 30 per cent in these seven years, compared to about 22 per cent increase in the poorest 50 per cent population in nominal terms. In fact the poorest 10 per cent of population appears to have suffered a decline in their wealth in these years.

The reasons for this are not too difficult to see. The Modi government has showed a cruel enthusiasm to please the super rich through a slew of policies that range from allowing foreign investment in  several sectors (including defence), selling of public sector assets at low prices to them, handing over other private assets to them through the new Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) at huge concessions, allowing loan write-offs worth Rs 10.7 lakh crore in the past seven years, destroying the labour law based protective system to allow hire and fire, and contractual employment, and massive cuts in corporate tax rates. For the super rich, Modi’s regime is truly the onset of achhe din, like never before.

CARBON INEQUALITY AND GENDER INEQUALITY

This year’s WIR has a couple of new features – inequality in carbon emission and between men and women’s earnings.

In India, the richest 10 per cent are responsible for emitting 8.8 tonnes of CO2 equivalent per person compared to just 1 tCO2eq per person for the poorest 50 per cent of the population. This is a mind boggling difference. It is primarily driven by the extreme poverty and deprivation of the vast majority of India’s population on the one hand and the extravagant lifestyles of the rich elite on the other. It shows that the inequality is not only deprivations in the present but it is damaging the environment in such scales that the future of people is also at stake.

The report also reveals that of the total income pre-tax labour income of working people in India, women’s share was just 18 per cent. This is because of two factors: very low women’s work participation rate and lower wages usually given to women. It also indicates that the huge amount of unpaid, invisible work done by women remains unaccounted still.