Latest data reveals that India's richest 1 per cent now account for 58 per cent of the country's total wealth, higher than the global figure of about 50 per cent. The study was released by rights group Oxfam, ahead of the World Economic Forum annual meet.
They said there are 84 billionaires in India, with a collective wealth of USD 248 billion, led by Mukesh Ambani, Dilip Shanghvi and Azim Premji. Total Indian wealth in the country stood at USD 3.1 trillion. Total global wealth in the year was USD 255.7 trillion, of which, over USD 6.5 trillion was held by billionaires led by Bill Gates, Amancio Ortega and Warren Buffett. The report titled 'An economy for the 99 per cent' said it is time to build a human economy that benefits everyone, not just the privileged few.
"Over the next 20 years, 500 people will hand over USD 2.1 trillion to their heirs, a sum larger than the GDP of India, a country of 1.3 billion people," Oxfam said. The study findings showed that the poorest half of the world has less wealth than had been previously thought while over the last two decades, "Due to a combination of discrimination and working in low-pay sectors, women's wages across Asia are between 70-90 per cent of men's." The study referred to the Global Wage Report 2016-17, of the Indian Labour Organisation, saying the country suffers from huge gender pay gap and has among the worst levels of gender wage disparity.
Oxfam said it meant that Indian women are not only poorly represented in the top bracket of wage-earners, but also experience wide gender pay gap at the bottom. It is also said that more than 40 per cent of the 400 million women who live in rural India are involved in agriculture and related activities. However, they aren't recognised as farmers and do not own land, they have limited access to government schemes and credit, restricting their agricultural productivity.
