{"id":32712,"date":"2018-10-29T16:02:45","date_gmt":"2018-10-29T10:32:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=32712"},"modified":"2018-10-29T16:02:45","modified_gmt":"2018-10-29T10:32:45","slug":"the-truth-about-inequality-in-india","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/the-truth-about-inequality-in-india\/","title":{"rendered":"The truth about inequality in India"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thehindubusinessline.com\/opinion\/the-truth-about-inequality-in-india\/article25171052.ece\">The truth about inequality in India<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Article<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>1.The writer notes that it is impossible to know about inequality in India as the income and wealth data of the well-off people are far from reliable<\/p>\n<p><strong>Important analysis:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ol start=\"2\">\n<li>The publication of James Crabtree\u2019s<strong> book The Billionaire Raj<\/strong> and last year the research paper by Luke Chancel and Thomas Piketty <strong>\u2018Indian Income Inequality, 1922-2015: From British Raj to Billionaire Ra<\/strong>j\u2019 both highlighted the economic inequality in India.<\/li>\n<li>Economic inequality is rising because of the rise of super-wealthy class.<\/li>\n<li>There are intellectuals like Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Jagdish Bhagwati, etc. who denied this, citing two reasons:<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<ul>\n<li>First, they argued that, \u00a0rather than inequality look at other parameters like poverty, satisfaction surveys, \u00a0etc.<\/li>\n<li>Second, they questioned the methodology of these surveys on inequality.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ol start=\"5\">\n<li>There are no government data on income and wealth.<\/li>\n<li>Tax data gives some information but the data is prone to understatement.<\/li>\n<li>They argued the main reason that we do not know the true level of inequality is that the income of wealthy people is unreadable.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><strong>Limitations in getting true picture of inequality<\/strong><\/p>\n<ol start=\"8\">\n<li>Government of India does not collect income data. It collects expenditure data. That is, not how much people earn, but how much they spend.<\/li>\n<li>For income, the only reliable data is data collected by India Human Development Survey (IHDS). In the IHDS 2004-05 survey, the individual with the highest income out of 43,000 families earned less than Rs. 22 lakh per year. It shows the loopholes in the data.<\/li>\n<li>The All India Debt and Investment Survey (AIDIS) of the NSSO gives the wealth data. There is question mark on their methodology too.<\/li>\n<li>The writer added that a nation that appears to care much for economic and social inequality, needs to work hard to find out how much inequality there is.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The truth about inequality in India Article 1.The writer notes that it is impossible to know about inequality in India as the income and wealth data of the well-off people are far from reliable Important analysis: The publication of James Crabtree\u2019s book The Billionaire Raj and last year the research paper by Luke Chancel and&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/the-truth-about-inequality-in-india\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The truth about inequality in India<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-test-1","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32712\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}