According to a recent survey by Oxfam, it has been seen that the top 1% of the global population are responsible for attaining 82% of wealth generated in the world in the previous year. 

On the plus side, the poor are not getting poorer. On the other, the rich definitely are getting richer. The bottom 50% of the population of the world has gotten only 1% of the world’s money while the richer section has increased their wealth by 762 billion dollars in just one year. The cause of this is inheritance, monopoly or cronyism. 

However, this group which comprises of the world’ wealthiest often do not pay their taxes properly or as much, owing to this tax evasion the developing countries themselves are losing out on at least 170 billion dollars of tax revenues from the corporations and elites. To mention further, it is actually seen that women pay about 10 trillion dollars annually to support global economy highlighting how they are not paid equally owing to gender discrimination and yet the gender wealth gap is even higher. 

In this wide gap between distribution of wealth, which had been taken into notice by the World Economic Forum that reportedly will focus on how to create “a shared future in a fractured world”, India has whooped from the richest 1% from having 58% of the country’s wealth to 73% of the country’s wealth! A country with a 67 crore population has such a wide gap in inequality that while the rich have gotten a lot more richer, the poor have hardly had a total 1% increase in their wealth. 

Here is what the Oxfam India CEO, Nisha Agarwal had to say on the matter – 

“The billionaire boom is not a sign of a thriving economy but a symptom of a failing economic system. Those working hard, growing food for the country, building infrastructure, working in factories are struggling to fund their child’s education, buy medicines for family members and manage two meals a day. The growing divide undermines democracy and promotes corruption and cronyism.”

It would take India 941 years for the rural Indian to earn as much as the top paid ones. That is how far we’ve taken the dynamics of the pay gap.

If you think India is not so worse in this situation then you must look into the inequality of pay of other countries: Middle East-61%, European countries-37%, China-41%, Russia-46%, US-Canada-47%. It is only the regions of sub-Saharan Africa and Brazil that share India’s statistics. And, Middle East used to be famous for being the place with the most unequal pay in the world.

The only solution to solve this issue would be to increase the wages of the ones with lower incomes in a firm and reduce the ones being top paid. It would probably make the top-paid ones earn only 20 times of what the others are being paid. It would demand the limit on returns to shareholders or rewarding them through dividends or buybacks, to even stop paying bonuses for a considerable amount of time. All this would be too brutal but they would uplift the pay ratio to a very great extent. However, to be robbed of their luxuries and their own years of hard-work to reach the top, would this solution be acceptable at all?