5 months ago
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Noted economist Prabhat Patnaik has flagged India’s sharply rising income and wealthiness inequality and advocated the instauration of a wealthiness taxation and an inheritance taxation to concern a acceptable of constitutionally guaranteed cardinal economical rights for citizens.
Delivering a peculiar lecture titled ‘A Set of Constitutionally Guaranteed Fundamental Economic Rights’ aft the merchandise of a publication successful honour of precocious economist V.K. Nataraj astatine the Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Research and Extension Centre, Manasagangothri, connected December 20, Prof. Patnaik said income inequality successful India had reached its highest level successful the past 100 years.
Citing estimates for 2022–23, helium said the apical 1% of Indians accounted for 23% of the full income. While income inequality had declined steadily from the pre-Independence play until the 1980s, it had risen sharply successful caller decades, helium observed.
Wealth inequality, helium added, was adjacent much stark. The apical 1% holds astir 40% of the country’s wealth, making India “probably 1 of the astir unequal economies successful the world”. “Such levels of inequality are inimical to ideology and to immoderate civilised society,” said Prof. Patnaik, who is besides a erstwhile prof of Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
Poverty
More “worrying” than income inequality, which had been accompanied by the country’s precocious GDP growth, was the emergence successful the comparative magnitude of implicit poverty, Prof. Patnaik argued. He rejected claims successful the media that poorness was disappearing successful India, recalling that erstwhile authoritative poorness studies began successful 1973–74, the Planning Commission defined poorness successful presumption of entree to a minimum of 2,100 calories per idiosyncratic per day, with estimates really calculated astatine 2,200 calories.
Based connected these nutritional norms, helium said that successful 1993–94, erstwhile the neo-liberal economical authorities began, municipality poorness stood astatine astir 57% and agrarian poorness astatine astir 58%. By 2011–12, municipality poorness had risen to 65% and agrarian poorness to 68%.
Prof. Patnaik further claimed that information from the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) showing agrarian poorness levels exceeding 80% successful 2017–18 were “suppressed” by the Union government. Subsequently, helium said, the methodology for information postulation was altered. Poverty, helium maintained, had continued to summation erstwhile measured against nutritional benchmarks.
Fundamental economical rights
Arguing for the designation of cardinal economical rights connected par with civilian and governmental rights, Prof. Patnaik listed 5 specified entitlements: the close to food, the close to employment, the close to free, universal, publically provided healthcare done a nationalist wellness service, the close to free, publically provided prime education, and the close to a non-contributory old-age pension and disablement benefits.
He estimated that implementing these rights would outgo an further 10% of GDP. The required resources, helium said, could beryllium mobilised done conscionable 2 taxes imposed connected the apical 1% of the colonisation — a wealthiness taxation and an inheritance tax.
“It is utterly shocking that India has nary wealthiness tax,” helium said, noting that contempt the apical 1% owning 40% of the country’s wealth, nary specified levy exists.
Referring to inheritance tax, Prof. Patnaik pointed retired that each precocious capitalist countries enforce decease duties. “In Japan, the complaint is 55%. In Britain and the United States, it is astir 40%,” helium said.
“Taken together, these 2 taxes are much than capable to concern a rights-based payment authorities successful India,” helium added.
