According to a report released by the charitable organization Oxfam International entitled Survival of the Rich, the total number of billionaires in India increased from 102 in 2020 to 166 in 2022. The richest one per cent in India now own more than 40 per cent of the country's total wealth, while the bottom half of the population together share just 3 per cent of wealth, their new study showed on Monday.
Oxfam International, while releasing its annual India Inequality Report at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, said that if India's 10 richest people were taxed at 5 percent, they could send all the country's children to school.
A one-time tax on Gautam Adani's wealth appreciation would fetch Rs 1.79 lakh crore. This amount is enough to hire more than five million primary school teachers in India for one year. And a two percent tax on India's billionaires on their entire wealth could raise Rs 40,423 crore over the next three years to address malnutrition in the country.
They added “Taxing the super-rich and big corporations is the door out of today's overlapping crises. It's time we demolish the convenient myth that tax cuts for the richest result in their wealth somehow 'trickling down' to everyone else." A tax of up to 5 percent on the world's multi-millionaires and billionaires could raise $1.7 trillion a year, enough to lift 2 billion people out of poverty.
From the start of the Covid pandemic to November 2022, there was a 121 percent increase in the wealth of India's billionaires. Meanwhile, out of the total GST revenue of Rs 14.83 lakh crore during 2021-22, 64 percent was received from the bottom 50 percent of the population. Only three percent of this came from India's 10 richest people.
They also noted that extreme concentrations of wealth led to weaker growth, corrupted politics and the media, corroded democracy and led to political polarization. The report states a billionaire emitting a million times more carbon than the average person hence they are key contributors to the climate crisis.