"Modi's Billionaire Raj more unequal than British Raj": Congress slams Centre over income inequality report

The Congress attacked the government on Wednesday regarding a report that highlights income and wealth disparities in India spanning a century. Party general secretary for communications, Jairam Ramesh, stated that the report titled "Income and Wealth Inequality in India, 1922-2023: The Rise of the Billionaire Raj," authored by renowned economists such as Thomas Piketty raises significant concerns. Ramesh claimed that under Prime Minister Narendra Modi's leadership, the wealth gap in India has surpassed that of the British colonial era, dubbing it "Narendra Modi's Billionaire Raj."

"The bottom line is this: Narendra Modi's Billionaire Raj, nurtured by the Prime Minister to favour his friends and fund his party's campaigns, is now more unequal than even the British Raj," he alleged.



Ramesh said the share of national income earned by India's top 1 per cent is now at its highest historical levels and is among the highest globally.

The rise of top-end inequality has been particularly pronounced between 2014 and 2023, which corresponds to the 'dus saal anyay kaal' and the Modi government's policies have directly caused this perverse growth through three methods -- enrich the rich, impoverish the poor and hide the data, he said.

"The Modi Sarkar's economic policies have focused on creating billionaire wealth. Most government contracts are handed out to a chosen few corporates, even as public assets are being sold to the same corporates at record discounts," he alleged.

"Now we also know that many of these companies have been donating large amounts to the ruling party under the Chanda Do, Dhanda Lo scheme. Demonetisation, the unplanned GST rollout, and the attempted and implemented changes to environmental, land acquisition, farm, and labour laws have all been done to support the Billionaire Raj," Ramesh claimed.

As former RBI deputy governor Viral Acharya established, the emergence of five big conglomerates including the Adani Group who are "building monopolies" in 40 sectors has caused India's current price rise, he claimed.

"In 2015, when a common man used to spend Rs 100 on goods, Rs 18 would go as profit to the business owner in 2021, the owner now gets Rs 36 in profits. The combination of these rising prices and an unemployment crisis has caused the common man's real wages to stagnate," Ramesh said.

He pointed out that the report notes that the quality of economic data in India is "notably poor" and has declined recently.

The Congress has consistently highlighted this -- the government failed to conduct the 2021 population census, refused to publish the 2011 Socio Economic Caste Census, manipulated GDP figures, and suppressed inconvenient data like the National Sample Survey (NSS) 2017-18 which showed an unprecedented decline in rural consumption expenditure, he said.

"The lack of adequate data, the Modi Sarkar's strategy to silence negative news, has contributed to a huge policy failure. Any government cannot resolve India's economic crisis without collecting data on the living conditions of 140 crore Indians," Ramesh said.

He said the Supreme Court's abolition of the Modi government's electoral bonds scheme is a "welcome step" in exposing the nexus between the wealthy and the political leadership.

"However, it is insufficient. The Indian National Congress' Paanch NYAY Pachees Guarantees are a direct response to India's astonishing inequalities," he asserted.

Inputs from PTI