Dr John Mohan Razu
As we celebrate yet another Day of our Republic, our Republic is engulfed with numerous problems.Indian unit of Oxfam International has brought out two separate reports on inequality.The facets primarily include rising inequality, growing hunger and widening digital divide. In all these, there is a need to capture the nuances of the problems that are intrinsically interwoven with each other. The facts and figures as they point to the growing gap of inequalities for the overall populace and also for the future of the nation are disturbing.
On the one hand, concentrations of wealth in the hands of a few living in opulence, while on the other,teeming millions who do not have enough purchasing capacity thereby unable to afford the basic essentials and meet the bare needs; totally disconnected to education deprived of digital devices show the widening and growing disparities between the haves and have-nots. All these point to the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few is morally deplorable.If political economy of our republic is controlled by a few totalitarians and monopolists, it is bound to have uneven and asymmetric ramifying outcomes/effects.
Oxfam India in its recent report on rising inequality highlights that 4.6 crore Indians are estimated to have fallen into extreme poverty in 2020, accounting for nearly half of the global ‘new poor according to the United Nations, while on the other the number of Indian billionaires grew from 102 to 143 during the pandemic period. The collective wealth of India’s 100 richest people hit a record high of Rs. 53.3 lakh crore ($775 billion) in 2021.
Adding further, Oxfam India, based on the Inequality Kills Report: The Davos India Supplement, released at the World Economic Forum’s virtual even entitled ‘The Davos Agenda’ came out with facts that in India, the wealth of billionaires during the pandemic (from march 2020 to November 30, 2021) increased from Rs. 23.1 lakh crore ($313 billion) to Rs. 53.2 lakh crore ($719 billion).
The report also cites that the Consumer Pyramid Household Survey data collected by CMIE for 2021 pointed out that it is estimated that 84% of households in the country suffered a decline in their income in a year marked by unprecedented loss of life and livelihoods. The data fact sheets on wealth highlight that 142 Indian billionaires own more wealth ($719 billion) that 555 million people ($657 billion, bottom 40%). The richest 98 have the same wealth ($657 billion) as the poorest 555 million people (bottom 40%).
The Oxfam statements adds in its analysis that “If each of the 10 richest Indian billionaires were to spend $1 million daily, it would take them 84 years to exhaust their current wealth. Indian billionaires have seen their combined fortunes more than doubled during the pandemic. Their number shot up to by 39%.” This is how the inequality between haves and nots get widened as years go by. CEO of Oxfam India Amitabh Behar said, “It has never been so important to start righting the wrongs of this obscene inequality by targeting extreme wealth trough taxation and get that money back into the real economy to save lives.”
This is how the logic and justifications of the capitalists and political leaders who govern the countries works. Leaders of nations argue that since they are wealth creators and providers of employment, augmenters of foreign exchange reserves, transferers of technical know-how and technology including payers of export and import duty, income and other taxes to the governments that in turn use those revenues for public services, and so, their interests are to be protected and promoted.CEO of Oxfam India highlighted that the pandemic has set gender parity back from 99 years to 135 years now. Women collectively lost Rs. 59.1 lakh crore ($800 billion) in earnings in 2020, with 1.3 crore fewer women in work now than in 2019.
The analysis also shows that allocation towards health in 2021-22 saw a decline of 10% from the previous year in the Union budget, while the allocation towards education in 2021-22 saw an increase of 10% over 2020-21. However, the analysis further adds that education spending as a percentage of GDP has remained as low as at 3% and increased only by 0.07%over the last 18 years. Similarly, health spending as a percentage of GDP has remained abysmally low at 1.2% to 1.6% and increased only 0.09% over the last 22 years.
The analysis has further exposed that with 93% of the nation’s workforce comprising workers who fall in the ambit of informal employment. The proposal to bring this segment under the ambit of formal employment is yet to be materialized. The report exhorts for initiating legal groundwork for basic social protection for this sector. On this, Oxfam India recommends that it is important to “recognize inequality is real and agree to measure it” with a robust and transparent data collection mechanism to measure income and wealth inequality.”
The worst manifestation of inequality is in the forms of hunger and poverty. When the Government of India very recent in 2022 made a statement that there are no starvation deaths in the country for which the Supreme Court asked “whether the government seriously believed that the apex court would accept such a stand when statistics and data, both from domestic and foreign surveys till recently indicated much to the contrary.”
When Attorney General K K Venugopal qualified his statement by saying that “the Centre’s stand was based on the state governments’ assertion about no starvation death in their geographical jurisdiction, a bench of Chief Justice N V Ramana and Justices A S Bopanna and Hima Kohli said, “Hunger and malnutrition go hand in hand. Hunger has to be satiated. It is the duty of the governments to provide food to the section of the population that stays hungry.”
Coronavirus has also badly dented and thus affected those learners from the vulnerable communities. For instance, the 2020 Annual State of Education Report projected that only 8.1% of children in government schools attended online classes. In the municipal corporation-run primary schools, the situation is even deplorable. By and large, in the government-run schools less than 10% attend the classes as the rest do not have phones.
On this subject, “The Supreme Court actually widened the ambit and asked the government to provide students with the gadgets in all schools, private, government or added and directed the central and state governments to fond a solution together. The courted noted that “a practicable, reasonable and workable solution can be found in the interest of providing access to computers and internet facilities to the young citizens of India belonging to the economically weaker sections and disadvantaged groups who are constitutionally entitled to free and compulsory education in terms of Article 21A.”
The data, facts and figures are recent and mind boggling as 4.6 crore people have been pushed to extreme poverty in 2020, and in the process Indian billionaires’ wealth substantially rose many times. Oxfam India report in conclusion says “to recognize inequality is real and agree to measure it with a robust and transparent data collection mechanism to measure income and wealth inequality” in view of the fact that 142 billionaires own more wealth than 555million people.
Those who govern polity and control economy might think that in line with Thomas Piketty that “I think inequality is fine, as long as it is in the common interest.” Common interest in line with maximum happiness for the maximum number of people ought to echo and resonate at all levels and not just the happiness and quality living of a few. This the state of our nation as we commemorate yet another Republic Day.
