Findings on India in Oxfam Inequality report “Reward Work, Not Wealth”: 

India added 17 new billionaires last year, raising the number to 101 billionaires. Indian billionaires’ wealth increased by INR 4891 billion — from INR 15,778 billion to over INR 20,676 billion. INR 4891 billion is sufficient to finance 85 per cent of the all states’ budget on Health and Education.

73 percent of the wealth generated last year went to the richest one percent, while 67 crore Indians who comprise the poorest half of the population saw one percent increase in their wealth. In the last 12 months the wealth of this elite group increased by Rs 20,913 billion. This amount is equivalent to total budget of Central Government in 2017-18.

India’s top 10% of population holds 73% of the wealth. 37% of India’s billionaires have inherited (family) wealth. They control 51 per cent of the total wealth of billionaires in the country. Only four women billionaires in India and three of them inherited family wealth. Between 2018 till 2022, India is estimated to produce 70 new millionaires every day. Number of billionaires has increased from only 9 in 2000 to 101 in 2017.

51 billionaires out of the total 101 are 65 years or above and own Rs 10,544 billion of total wealth. If we assume that in the next 20 years, at least Rs 10,544 billion will be passed on to the inheritors and on that if 30% inheritance tax is imposed, the Government can earn at least Rs 3176 billion.

Rs 3176 billion sufficient to finance 6 crucial services–Medical & Public Health, Family Welfare, Water & Sanitation, Housing, Urban Development and Labour & Labour Welfare in all States. Over the next 20 years, 500 of the world’s richest people will hand over $2.4 trillion to their heirs – a sum larger than the GDP of India, a country of 1.3 billion people.

In countries like India and the Philippines, at least one in every two workers in the garment sector are paid below the minimum wage. It would take 941 years for a minimum wage worker in rural India to earn what the top paid executive at a leading Indian garment company earns in a year.

It would take around 17.5 days for the best paid executive at a top Indian garment company to earn what a minimum wage worker in rural India will earn in their lifetime (presuming 50 years at work).

It would cost around Rs 326 million a year to ensure 14,764 minimum wage workers in rural India were paid a living wage. This is about half the amount paid out to wealth shareholders of a top Indian garment company.

Results of Oxfam Survey 

New research by Oxfam seeks to understand perceptions of inequality and support for redistribution policy options.137 Over 70,000 people were surveyed in 10 countries across five continents, representing over one-quarter of the world’s population and more than a third of the world’s GDP. These online surveys collected data from nationally representative samples in the United States, India, Nigeria, the United Kingdom, Mexico, South Africa, Spain, Morocco, the Netherlands and Denmark.

In India, specifically among people who think they are poor, seeing where they actually sit in the national income distribution resulted in almost 15% more respondents agreeing it is difficult for a person to increase the amount of money they have despite working hard. 84% Indians agree or strongly agree that the gap between the rich and poor in [country] is too large.

In terms of attitudes and beliefs about inequality, nearly two-thirds of all respondents think the gap between the rich and the poor needs to be addressed urgently or very urgently. And many have an even stronger sense of urgency: 73% in India, 79%in South Africa, 85% in Nigeria, and 93% in Mexico believe this.

There is also strong support for increasing the tax rate for the top 1% of income earners. When asked whether government deficits should be reduced by cutting public services or by increasing taxes on the 1%, over half of respondents selected higher taxes for the 1%. 52% Indians agree that income taxes on the richest 1% of people should be increased.

When respondents were asked to choose specific policy options to be put in place to tackle inequality, in nine out of the 10 countries, the four most selected options across countries were: 1) provide free and high-quality education and medical care; 2) fight corruption; 3) raise the minimum wage; and 4) provide jobs with decent wages.
 

Recommendations

Oxfam India is calling upon the Indian Government to act on growing inequality ans create an equal India. Following are the recommendations:
 

• Promote inclusive growth by ensuring that the income of the bottom 40% of the population grows faster than of the top 10% so that the gap between the two begins to close.  This can be done by encouraging labour-intensive sectors that will create more jobs; investing in agriculture; and effectively implementing the social protection schemes that exist.
• Seal the leaking wealth bucket by taking stringent measures against tax evasion and avoidance; taxing the super-rich by re-introducing inheritance tax, increasing wealth tax, reducing and eventually do away with corporate tax breaks; creating a more equal opportunity country by increasing public expenditure on health and education.
• Bring data transparency, produce and make available high quality data on income and wealth. Regularly monitor the measures the government takes to tackle the issue of rising inequality.

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A top international report has said that India fares “very badly, ranking 132 out of 152 countries in its commitment to reducing inequality – a very worrying situation given that the country is home to 1.2 billion people, many of whom live in extreme poverty.”
Compared to India, among the neighbours, Nepal ranks 81, Sri Lanka 138, Pakistan 139, and Bangladesh 141. Sweden ranks No 1, followed by Belgium, Denmark, Norway, Germany, Finland, Austria and France. United Kingdom ranks 17, South Africa 21, United States 23, Russia 85, and China 87.

Insisting that “unless they take concerted action now”, India and other countries ranking equally badly “will fail to end poverty and fail to make sustainable economic progress that benefits everyone in society”, the report, prepared by well-known UK-based NGO Oxfam in collaboration with the US-based Development Finance International, says that if India were to reduce inequality by a third, more than 170 million people would no longer be poor.

Called Commitment to Reducing Inequality (CRI) report, it says, the Government of India spending on “health, education and social protection is woefully low”, adding, “The tax structure looks reasonably progressive on paper, but in practice much of the progressive tax is not collected.”

It further says, “On labour rights and respect for women in the workplace, India also fares poorly, reflecting that the majority of the labour force is employed in the agricultural and informal sectors, which lack union organization.”

Thus, among 152 countries, India ranks 149 in spending on health, education and social protection; 91 in progressive structure and incidence of tax; and 86 in labour market policies to address inequality 86, with the overall CRI ranking averaging at 132.
 

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Women farmers in Jukanoli village, in the hill district of Almora, Uttarakhand. The state’s hill districts are still struggling with low per capita income, bad access, poor healthcare facilities, unemployment, decline in agricultural output and neglect.
 
Uttarakhand, the Himalayan state which borders along China, is the sixth richest state in India in terms of per capita income but those living in its hill districts benefit less from this development than those in the plains.
 
Consider this: The per capita income of Haridwar, a district in the plains that is 53 km from state capital Dehradun, is Rs 122,172. But Uttarkashi, the northern-most Himalayan district, reports half that per capita income at Rs 59,791, according to the 2014-15 Statistical Diary, Uttarakhand. This is close to the per capita income of Jharkhand which ranks among the 17th in the country.
 
The irony is that Uttarakhand was carved out of Uttar Pradesh (UP) in 2000 precisely so that exclusive attention could be given to the development of its remote hill districts. These had been left neglected by successive governments based in UP’s capital Lucknow, around 600 km from Dehradun.
 
Sixteen years since, the mountain districts of Uttarakhand are still short of basic facilities, especially healthcare. There are no jobs to be had in these districts and this is leading to large-scale migration to the plains, leaving entire mountain villages uninhabited. And farming, which used to be the principal occupation in the hills, is crippled by small land holdings and a lack of government agri initiatives that neighbouring Himachal Pradesh sees in plenty.
 
“Uttarakhand was not founded for the development of Haridwar and Haldwani (cities in the plains) but for the development of the 16,000 plus villages in the hills of the state. But nothing is being done for them,” said Anil Joshi, environmental activist and convenor of the Gaon Bachao Andolan (save the village movement), a campaign to tackle the state’s migration issue.
 
At Rs 122,804 Dehradun’s own per capita income is closer to that of Haridwar. Though it is a hill district, it benefitted from being the state capital.
 
Rich state, poor health: Only 68% health centres function well
 
Uttarakhand’s health infrastructure is facing a crisis, as IndiaSpend reported in February 2017–only 68% of its primary health centres that form the frontline of the public healthcare system work 24×7, as they are supposed to. The second-rung community health centres are short-staffed–they are 83% short of emergency specialists and have half the number of nurses needed.
 
Uttarakhand also suffers poor infant mortality rates (IMR), ranking 18th among 29 states, according to an Observer Research Foundation analysis. But the hill districts of Rudraprayag, Pithoragarh and Almora record fewer infant deaths despite their inaccessible terrain. It is the well-developed pilgrim district of Haridwar that reports the worst figure of 70 deaths per 1,000 infants (2012-13), the same as conflict-ridden Congo. Haridwar also represents a high rate of stunting–low weight for height–52% in children under five, compared to Pithorgarh’s 22%.
 
Himachal Pradesh too has a problem accessing hilly districts but it is doing much better than Uttarakhand on the healthcare front as this comparative report of the two states for 2014-15 shows. Himachal Pradesh has 141 beds per 100,000 people compared to 86 beds in Uttarakhand–which has 47% more population (10 million) than the former (6.8 million). Himachal Pradesh has nearly double the primary health centres (500) Uttarakhand does (258). And its community health centres (78) outnumber those in Uttarakhand (59).
 

 
Ghost villages in the hills: 1,048 emptied out completely
 
People living in the mountains have always migrated to cities in the plains in search of white-collar jobs. But they would leave their families, or a part of it, behind. Now migrations to the plains involve entire families moving from the hills to the plains, either within Uttarakhand or to other parts of the country, said locals.
 
While hill districts saw a decadal population growth of 12.75%, the plains recorded almost 32%. This is a sure sign of large scale migration of entire families from the hills.
 

Falling yield: Agriculture growth slows to 4%
 
There has been slowing down of growth in agriculture and allied activities in Uttarakhand. Its annual, average growth stood at 4% between 2010 and 2015 compared to Himachal Pradesh’s 9% in the same period.
 
“Himachal Pradesh earns more than Rs 15,000 crore every year from horticulture and agriculture because of its government policies. The Uttarakhand government never focussed on developing agriculture and that is why there is this deep decline,” said Joshi.
 

 
Also, smaller land holdings give smaller returns on investment and 73% of all farmers in the state are marginal, with less than 1 hectare of land according to the state statistical diary.
 
With migrants abandoning their land to the elements, vacated farmlands are attracting wild animals from surrounding forests and this is leading to animal-human conflicts. Even though a notification passed in February 2016 allows the culling of wild boars, the implementation of the notification has been poor.
 
“Villagers say that even if they work in the fields, their crops will be destroyed by monkeys and boars, so what’s the point?,” said a senior officer working in the horticulture department requesting anonymity. He also pointed out that climate change has pushed fruit cultivation to even higher altitudes, causing a drop in the production.
 
“An upwards altitudinal shift in cropping has been reported in cash crops like apple, rajma, potato and carrot. Some projections speculate on an increase of night time temperature (Dimri and Dash, 2011) which may not only lead to decrease in production of some crops such as rice, but also reduce the winter killing of pests, hereby decreasing crop yields,” said 2015: Climate Change in Uttarakhand, a report by the Centre for Ecology, Development and Research.
 
There has also a drop in annual rainfall in the region that has impacted the state’s dominantly rain-dependent farming. “Most of the old water sources are drying up, agriculture is becoming very challenging,” said the official.
 
An analysis of temperature and rainfall data over 100 years shows a decline in rainfall that grew steeper after 1970s. “Although the average reduction rate in annual total rainfall has been insignificant, yet it may put great stress on the water resources of the region. The rainfall declining trend (sic) is not the same all over the state,” noted Changing Climate of Uttarakhand, a paper published in 2014 in the journal Geology and Geosciences.
 
Haridwar received more rainfall than normal while all other districts witnessed less precipitation. “This rainfall shortage is more acute in Pithoragarh, Bageshwar, Almora, Champawat and Nainital Districts,” the report further noted.
 
Older residents said that tougher conditions for agriculture mean that it is harder for the youth to resist the pull of migration.
 
“Youngsters here prefer to work as security guards in Delhi earning a measly Rs 3,000 a month than working here. They see no future here,” said the senior officer in the horticulture department.
 
(Yadavar is principal correspondent with IndiaSpend.)
 
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This article was first published on  IndiaSpend
 

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