The Covid-19 pandemic can lead to the biggest increase in global inequality on record as it may take a decade for the poor to recover their losses, said Oxfam's Inequality Virus report released Monday morning. The rich, on the other hand, not only recouped their losses in record time but witnessed exuberant rise in personal fortune last year.
The pandemic is likely to have a more significant impact on India which has been grappling with growing inequality. According to the report, India’s 100 billionaires have seen their fortunes increase by nearly Rs 12.98 lakh crores since March 2020, enough to give every one of the 138 million poorest Indian people a cheque for Rs 94,045 each.
“The report shows how the rigged economic system is enabling a super-rich elite to amass wealth in the middle of the worst recession and the biggest economic crisis in the history of independent India, while billions of people are struggling to make ends meet. It reveals how the pandemic is deepening long-standing economic, caste, ethnic, and gender divides,” Oxfam India CEO Amitabh Behar said.
“While the Coronavirus was being touted as a great equaliser in the beginning, it laid bare the stark inequalities inherent in the society soon after the lockdown was imposed,” Behar added.
In an analogy, Oxfam said that it would take an unskilled worker 10,000 years to make what Reliance Industries' (RIL) Mukesh Ambani made in an hour during the pandemic and 3 years to make what he made in a second. The increase in wealth of the top 11 billionaires of India during the pandemic could sustain the NREGS scheme for 10 years or the health ministry for 10 years.
Oxfam study notes that informal workers are the worst hit. Out of a total 122 million who lost their jobs 75 percent, which accounts for 92 million jobs, were lost in the informal sector. Data also shows that 170,000 people lost their jobs every hour in the month of April 2020.
Source : Oxfam
The pandemic has also led to inequality in crucial sectors such as health and education. The long disruption of schooling risked doubling the rate of out of school, especially among the poor. Only 4 per cent of rural households had a computer and less than 15 per cent rural households had an internet connection, said the report.
"While the burden of ensuring children continuing their education fell on individual households with those financially better off and educated benefitting, this period saw an exponential growth of private providers such as BYJU’s (currently valued at USD 10.8 billion) and Unacademy (valued at USD 1.45 billion)," Oxfam said.
Advocating tax increase on country's super rich, Oxfam's report stated that one estimate suggests that a 4 per cent wealth tax on the nation’s 954 richest families could raise the equivalent of 1 per cent of India’s GDP.