Wealth of India’s top 1% richest has reached historical highs, reveals study

NT Bureau, Agencies

New Delhi: The wealth concentrated in the richest 1 per cent of India's population is at its highest in six decades and the percentage share of income exceeds that of countries including Brazil and the United States, research group the World Inequality Lab found.

Since India, which won its independence in 1947 from Britain, opened its markets to foreign investment in 1992, its number of billionaires has surged.

"The 'Billionaire Raj' headed by India's modern bourgeoisie is now more unequal than the British Raj headed by the colonialist forces," the authors said.

By the end of 2023, India's richest citizens owned 40.1 per cent of the country's wealth, the highest since 1961, and their share of total income was 22.6 per cent, the most since 1922, the study, whose four authors included Nitin Kumar Bharti and Thomas Piketty, found.

In 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi was elected with a promise to focus on development and implement economic reforms.

Critics argue that during his past two terms in office, there has been a noticeable widening gap between the wealthy and the rural poor, despite India experiencing a rapid economic growth rate of 8.4% in the last quarter of 2023, the fastest in one-and-a-half years.

The Congress party has highlighted Modi's government's alleged proximity to billionaires in their pre-election rallies, ahead of the national polls commencing on April 16.

According to the World Inequality Lab, factors such as inadequate education have contributed to trapping certain segments of the population in low-paying jobs, thereby hindering the economic progress of the bottom 50% and middle 40% of Indians.

Data from Forbes' billionaire rankings reveals a significant increase in the number of Indians possessing a net worth exceeding US$1 billion, rising from just one individual in 1991 to 162 in 2022. Notably, Asia's two wealthiest individuals, Mukesh Ambani of Reliance Industries and Gautam Adani of the Adani Group, are Indian.

The top 10,000 wealthiest individuals among India's 92 million adults possess an average wealth of 22.6 billion rupees (US$271.91 million).