Mumbai, January 20: The top 1 per cent of the Indians hold 4 times more the amount of wealth held by 953 million people or the bottom 70 per cent of the population says the rights group Oxfam. The new report revealed by Oxfam, highlighted that the combined total wealth of 63 Indian billionaires is higher than the, when compared to total Union Budget of India for the fiscal year 2018-19 which was at INR 24,42,200 crore. The report also showed that the world’s 2,153 billionaires have more wealth than the 4.6 billion people who make up 60 percent of the planet’s population. “Our broken economies are lining the pockets of billionaires and big business at the expense of ordinary men and women. No wonder people are starting to question whether billionaires should even exist,” says Oxfam India CEO Amitabh Behar.
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The report name “Time to Care” along with India focussed supplement shed a light on how economies are fuelling the inequality crisis, that is aiding a wealthy elite to accumulate vast fortunes at the expense of ordinary people especially ordinary people and particularly poor women and girls. For a female domestic worker to earn what a top CEO of a Tech company makes in one year, it would take 22,277 years to earn that much. As the earnings pegged at INR 106 per second, the CEO makes more in 10 minutes as compared to what the domestic worker would make in one year, noted the report. “Women and girls put in 3.26 billion hours of unpaid care work each and every day—a contribution to the Indian economy of at least INR 19 lakh crore a year; which is 20 times the entire education budget of India in 2019 (INR 93,000 crores),” says Behar.
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That said due to the women care workload they often have to reduce the work hours or sometimes drop out of the workforce. Whereas, their care work accounts for more than three-quarters of unpaid work. Around the world, 42 per cent of women are unable to get jobs as they are held responsible for all the caregiving as compared to just 6 per cent of men. “Governments created the inequality crisis —they must act now to end it. They must ensure corporations and wealthy individuals pay their fair share of tax and increase investment in public services and infrastructure. They must pass laws to tackle the huge amount of care work done by women and girls, and ensure that people who do some of the most important jobs in our society,” says Behar.
