According to a study by the World Inequality Lab, the richest 1% 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.

India has been facing a brain drain problem for a long time, with many of its brightest citizens leaving the country in search of better education and higher paying jobs. That studying medicine in Ukraine than in India is far less expensive is a telling commentary on neglect of this vital sector both by the policy wonks and powers that be. And the grimmer portend is better paying opportunities abroad than in India which is reflected by a recent development — the IT giant Cognizant recently recruited on a mass scale graduates at an annual package of a measly Rs 2.5 lac whereas its CEO Ravi Kumar Singisetti, received $22.56 million in compensation in 2023, making him the highest-paid CEO in India. This is about 556 times the median salary of Cognizant employees. Winner takes it all is the leitmotif of the Indian lopsided growth story.

According to a Morgan Stanley report, almost nine lakh Indians have given up their citizenship since 2015 and 23,000 millionaires have left India since 2014. These two statistics pales before the statistic education-related travel by Indians more than doubled in 10 years, from $2.46 billion in FY15 to $6.3 billion in FY24. Obviously, they are bearing out what Professor Abid Hussein the Indian ambassador to the US under the VP Singh regime said — it is better to have brain drain rather than brain in the drain. Hussein might have put it rather harshly but no one can deny that what he said was real and not dramatised.

When a few film stars including in the regional cinema reportedly get Rs 100 crore and more, it causes heartburn. When a few advocates reportedly charge Rs 1 crore per hearing, it causes heartburn. When a college dropout conducts a quiz programme and gets Rs 5 crore per episode, it causes heartburn. When cricketers including former cricketers and film stars including former film stars are paid endorsement fees of Himalayan proportions jostling out professional models, it causes heartburn with no verifiable incremental sales for the brands they are endorsing.

India shining boomeranged in 2004 for the incumbent prime minister Vajpayee. Likewise, the 2024 Lok Sabha results should wake up the Modi government out of is smugness. While it is no one’s case that we should embrace communism, we should tweak our taxation policies. Instead of imposing GST on curd, milk and life insurance premium irrespective of the sum assured, we should impose GST on celebrity endorsement fees to 50%. Ditto on swanky cars. GST of 28% may be imposed on services offered by film stars to producers. Wealth tax was done away with in haste in 2015 on the specious ground it did not generate revenue even to cover the administrative expenses thereon. The problem with the then wealth tax scheme was it targeted only six assets leaving out shares and bank deposits, A comprehensive wealth tax on net assets in excess of Rs 5 crore should not only arrest the widening disparity but also beget the exchequer a sizeable revenue. Estate duty kept in suspended animation since 1985 should be revived targeting estates valued at Rs 10 crore and more. Let the BJP spokespersons not taunt the author as coming out with a communist manifesto. Robinhood taxation consists in taxing the rich and funding various welfare schemes from the proceeds therefrom. What we are witnessing right now is welfare schemes being funded by GST and fuel taxation both of which tax the poor as much as they tax the rich.

Brain drain starts with students going abroad for higher education. Asking students and parents to avail of education loans for medical education instead of lowering the fees to reasonable levels is a cruel homily. If the government cannot invest in education, it should allow the industry to do so like in Germany. Medical colleges owned by private hospitals and private drug companies may be win-win. Last but not the least, we must heed the advice proffered by the Infosys founder Narayan Murthy some three decades ago from the CII pulpit — the honcho salary should not be more than 15 times the salary of the lowest paid employee of the company. Now the differential is astronomical. Even the second in command is left chafing.

S Murlidharan is a freelance columnist and writes on economics, business, legal and taxation issues