: Wealth amassed by 100 richest Indians during pandemic can give 13.8 cr poorest Rs 94k each: Oxfam #IndiaNEWS #India Indias 100 top billionaires have seen their fortunes increase by Rs 12,97,822 crore

Wealth amassed by 100 richest Indians during pandemic can give 13.8 cr poorest Rs 94k each: Oxfam #IndiaNEWS #India
Indias 100 top billionaires have seen their fortunes increase by Rs 12,97,822 crore since March last year when the COVID-19 pandemic hit the country and this amount is enough to give 13. 8 crore poorest Indians a cheque for Rs 94,045 each.

The latest India supplement of the Oxfam report The Inequality Virus said it would take an unskilled worker 10,000 years to make what businessman Mukesh Ambani made in an hour during the pandemic and three years to make what he made in a second.

The report has been released on the opening day of the World Economic Forums Davos Dialogues.

Calling the coronavirus pandemic the worlds worst public health crisis in a hundred years, the report said it triggered an economic crisis comparable in scale only with the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Indias 100 billionaires have seen their fortunes increase by Rs 12,97,822 crores since March last year which is enough to give every one of the 138 million poorest Indians a cheque for Rs 94,045 each, the report said.

The new global survey of 295 economists from 79 countries, commissioned by Oxfam, reveals that 87 per cent of respondents, including Jeffrey Sachs, Jayati Ghosh and Gabriel Zucman, expect an increase or a major increase in income inequality in their country as a result of the pandemic.

India has the worlds fourth lowest health budget in terms of its share of government expenditure, it said. If Indias top 11 billionaires are taxed at just 1 per cent on the increase in their wealth during the pandemic, it will be enough to increase the allocation of Jan Aushadi Scheme by 140 times, which provides affordable medicines to the poor and marginalized.

India introduced one of the earliest and most stringent lockdowns in the face of the pandemic and its enforcement brought the economy to a standstill, triggering unemployment, hunger, distress migration and untold hardship in its wake, the report said.

The rich were able to escape the pandemics worst impact; and while the white-collar workers isolated themselves and worked from home, a majority of the not-so-fortunate Indians lost their livelihood, it said.

The report noted that billionaires like Gautam Adani, Shiv Nadar, Cyrus Poonawalla, Uday Kotak, Azim Premji, Sunil Mittal, Radhakrishan Damani, Kumar Manglam Birla and Laxmi Mittal working in sectors like coal, oil, telecom, medicines, pharmaceutical, education and retail increased their wealth exponentially since March 2020 when India announced worlds biggest COVID-19 lockdown and economy came to standstill.

On the other hand, data has shown that 170,000 people lost their jobs every hour in the month of April 2020, the report said.

Findings of the report showed that rich got richer during the pandemic.