Yawning income-wealth disparity causing heartburn and brain drain

Instead of imposing GST on curd, milk and life insurance premium, we should impose GST on celebrity endorsement fees

- S MURLIDHARAN

According to a study by the world Inequality Lab, the richest l% of India's population own 40.1% of the country's wealth, which is the highest concentration of wealth in six decades. This is also the highest share of total income since 1922, at 22.6%. The study found that India's inequality gap has widened sharply under Prime Minister Narendra Modi's decade in power. The growth mainly came at the expense of the middle class many of whom are incidentally voting with their feet and migrating to western countries in search of higher education and employment. The study also found that factors such as a lack of education have trapped some people in low-paid jobs, which has depressed the growth of the bottom 50% and middle 40% of Indians. The Centre recently has urged stepping up enrolment of the unorganised sector gig workers in the e-shram portal. The e-shram portal, which was launched in August 2021, has enrolled about 300 million workers, which while being an impressive achievement also is a sad admission of drying up of meaningful employment opportunities in the organised sector. It suggests that about 75% of the unorganised sector workforce (which in turn accounts for about 80% of the total workforce) has been enrolled. It is all very well to smugly say self-employment and its adjunct gig employment is better than being employee of someone else but it is a poor and cruel joke on the unemployed and underemployed.