Income inequality has become an endemic problem in India with various policies and measures framed to battle it having achieved little so far

India’s super-rich, around 10 percent of its population, splash millions on their houses and fancy cars, throw opulent parties and deck themselves in designer attires and jewelleries. They build empires and make sure their wealth doesn’t run out for generations.

In stark contrast, the vast number of poor – around 23 percent of its population – live in heart wrenching poverty. They struggle to buy themselves proper food and do not even have a basic shelter on their heads. Then there are the low income people or the financially weaker sections of the society, who do not exactly live below the poverty line, but nevertheless have great difficulty in making ends meet.

This glaring income inequality is striking at the heart of India’s effort to enter the league of developed nations of the world. It is said that the top 10 percent of India’s population account for almost half the income generated and hold around 80 percent of the wealth in the nation. A recent report showed that the absolute growth in income of the top one percent of the population from 1980s has been more than that of the bottom 50 percent of people taken together.

While the economic growth has been impressive in the nation, as is revealed by the GDP numbers year after year, its benefits clearly haven’t percolated to the sizeable proportion of the bottom strata of the society for decades. This makes India one the richest countries in the world with a poorer average population.

And this problem of income inequality is endemic – result of both India’s age old social structure and lackadaisical implementation of polices.

Caste system, corruption and lack of concerted efforts perpetuate problem

The age old inhuman caste system which broadly splits the Indian society into upper and lower castes is in large part responsible for the inequality. Post the nation’s independence, when the equal opportunities were officially provided to people of all castes, it was found that the upper caste ones were frontrunners in grabbing those on account of their education, better upbringing and better contacts.

The lower caste people, on the other hand, were left behind. Coming mostly from poor, uneducated families – which in turn was mainly on account of being denied education and being ostracised and oppressed for generations – they couldn’t even complete their secondary schooling, let alone enter the hallowed portals of prestigious higher education centres or bag jobs in big organisations. They remained mired in poverty.

And instead of making an effort to lift them out of poverty, the politicians simply exploited the caste divide to create vote banks.

Statistics show one third of scheduled caste and tribe people are poor compared to just 10 percent of the upper caste people. Same goes for minority Muslim community. Development efforts have not been able to reach them so far.

This brings us to another burning issue – corruption and a fractious political scene. Concerted efforts by all political parties and authorities to stamp out deep-rooted poverty has been missing all throughout. A large population, scattered over a vast country, too has also made the solution complicated.

But it’s not that impossible. We simply need to turn to our populous neighbour China for some inspiration in this direction. True, Chinese economy has grown at a much more breakneck speed than ours, but it has also made much stronger efforts to provide its population with education, proper healthcare and other amenities to uplift their standards. Secondary schooling in China is far higher than in India, for example. Apart from that, China’s tremendous thrust on manufacturing (cheap Chinese products have flooded markets in almost every part of the world) has also lifted vast multitudes out of poverty.

China currently has a far lower poverty rate than India, higher average income, and less unequal distribution of wealth. The accomplishment should definitely be a wake-up call for us given the fact we both started out as an agrarian society.

While in China, dependency on agriculture has been reduced drastically through rapid pace of industrialization, in India a large part of the population still call farming their profession. They form the unorganised workforce with no access to social security and very little income because of the small sizes of land they hold.

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