New Oxfam Study Reveals India's Worrying Wealth Disparity

Wealth of India's richest 1 per cent is four-times more than the bottom 70 per cent of the country’s population, according to a new study by rights group Oxfam. The study also revealed that the total wealth of all Indian billionaires is more than the country’s annual budget.

In the study 'Time to Care', released ahead of the 50th Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF), Oxfam said that the wealth of the world's 2,153 billionaires was more than the wealth held by 4.6 billion people who make up 60 per cent of the planet's population.

"The gap between rich and poor can't be resolved without deliberate inequality-busting policies, and too few governments are committed to these," news agency PTI quoted Oxfam India CEO Amitabh Behar as saying in Davos.

The issues of income and gender inequality are expected to figure prominently in discussions at the five-day summit of the WEF, starting Monday. The WEF's annual Global Risks Report has also warned that the downward pressure on the global economy from macroeconomic fragilities and financial inequality continued to intensify in 2019.

Although global inequality has declined over the past three decades, domestic income inequality has risen in many countries, particularly in advanced economies and reached historic highs in some, the Global Risks Report flagged last week.

The Oxfam report further said "sexist" economies are fuelling the inequality crisis by enabling a wealthy elite to accumulate vast fortunes at the expense of ordinary people and particularly poor women and girls.