<p>A new report by Oxfam has brought to focus unaccounted wealth stashed away by the world’s super-rich in tax havens and called on governments to strengthen taxation systems, increase financial transparency, and move towards creating a global asset register to identify, track, and tax at higher rates the wealth of the richest individuals. The British-founded non-profit known for its inequality studies reported that untaxed wealth hidden offshore by the richest 0.1per cent exceeds the entire wealth of the poorest half of humanity, which comprises 4.1 billion people. Ten years after the so-called Panama Papers leaked a trail of wealth avoidance by some of the world’s wealthiest individuals, “the super-rich continue to exploit offshore systems to evade taxes and conceal assets, highlighting the urgent need for coordinated international action to tax extreme wealth and end the use of tax havens”, the report said. Oxfam calculated the loot to be of the order of $3.5 trillion in 2024, an amount higher than the GDP of France and more than twice the combined GDP of the world’s 44 least developed countries. It is also about 85per cent of the GDP of India.</p>.<p>The numbers paint a grim picture of the power and control exercised by a super-minority of the super-rich, leading to an unprecedented concentration of wealth that inflicts structural violence and in-your-face manifest violence that is tearing society apart – a toxic mix of economic violence and the concentration of wealth, which then fuels and funds armed conflict of the kind the Israel-US are now engaged in against Iran. In a reinforcing feedback loop, the war machine feeds into the digital-military-industrial complex that profits as enemies are conjured up and destroyed in what are mostly one-sided, push-button wars that have killed an untold number of innocent citizens.</p>.Artemis and the great Moon race.<p>The thinking that delivers violence across borders brings violence within borders, evident in the rising inequity and inequality that erodes opportunity, reduces life expectancy, and most severely affects the poor, women and girls, and radicalised groups. Consider Oxfam data that 20 of the richest billionaires are estimated on average to emit 8,000 times more carbon than a billion of the poorest. Further, economic sanctions have brought misery that may be worse than overt killing by the war machine: a much-cited report by the journal Lancet last year noted that unilateral economic sanctions lead to about 564,000 excess deaths around the world each year. The study analysed the health impact of economic sanctions using a dataset of age-specific mortality rates and sanctions events for 152 countries from 1971 to 2021.</p>.<p><strong>Lens on the India model</strong></p>.<p>While the Oxfam report should shock the conscience and initiate corrective actions globally, it also carries special implications for India. India has witnessed growing inequality, fuelled by policies that created a new class of the super-rich who wield undue influence in policymaking. The 2024 working paper (‘Income and Wealth Inequality in India, 1922-2023: The Rise of the Billionaire Raj’) by Thomas Piketty and others from the World Inequality Lab reported that “India’s modern bourgeoisie is now more unequal than the British Raj”, wondering “how long such inequality levels can sustain without major social and political upheaval”. The paper detailed data that showed the rise of top-end inequality has been particularly pronounced in terms of wealth concentration between 2014-15 and 2022-23. But it is a sign of the times that the report did not stir policy debates, let alone action, and remains a forgotten red flag as India pushes ahead with its goal of expanding from the fourth to the third-largest economy.</p>.<p>Following the dominant American narratives and mimicking its politics of domination or its business lessons of unbridled shareholder capitalism — while mouthing pious but hollow approaches to equity, sustainability, or fairness — will erode the Indian ethos. It will tear apart the oft-cited values of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam and lead to a plunder of resources and all the attendant ills that undue wealth concentration has brought to the United States and its policymaking. What the Oxfam global report shows is a failing global order, a tear in the social fabric, and the inevitability of violence that will eventually consume not just the poor but also the rich and the super-rich. <br>Rewarding greed while ignoring moral obligations central to issues like fairness or distributive justice has a practical downside.</p>.<p>This offers a different lens and raises concerns about India’s newfound closeness to the US and Israel. While presented as a strategic geopolitical partnership, this closeness also carries the burden of buying into the American ideological Kool-Aid and ceding India’s wealth of wisdom to a policy machine that eventually has only interests, not friends. India’s model, therefore, cannot be the failed US model with its rising inequality and growing structural violence within its borders and military violence outside.</p>.<p>Yet, the signs of rising inequality are everywhere in India today. From private equity increasingly ruling hospitals to galloping fees at schools run in air-conditioned rooms, from unemployed youth in poorly paid food-delivery jobs to the deteriorating condition of public hospitals, passenger trains, and buses, India runs the risk of deteriorating from a socialist set-up to a would-be market economy after the 1991 economic reforms, and now to a de facto market society. As Prof Michael Sandel explains, a market society is one in which everything can be bought for a price, whereas a market economy is a tool for organising productive activity. This cannot be the destiny of India, where dharma comes before artha.</p>.<p><strong>(The writer is a journalist and faculty member at SPJIMR; Syndicate: The Billion Press)</strong></p><p><em>Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.</em></p>
<p>A new report by Oxfam has brought to focus unaccounted wealth stashed away by the world’s super-rich in tax havens and called on governments to strengthen taxation systems, increase financial transparency, and move towards creating a global asset register to identify, track, and tax at higher rates the wealth of the richest individuals. The British-founded non-profit known for its inequality studies reported that untaxed wealth hidden offshore by the richest 0.1per cent exceeds the entire wealth of the poorest half of humanity, which comprises 4.1 billion people. Ten years after the so-called Panama Papers leaked a trail of wealth avoidance by some of the world’s wealthiest individuals, “the super-rich continue to exploit offshore systems to evade taxes and conceal assets, highlighting the urgent need for coordinated international action to tax extreme wealth and end the use of tax havens”, the report said. Oxfam calculated the loot to be of the order of $3.5 trillion in 2024, an amount higher than the GDP of France and more than twice the combined GDP of the world’s 44 least developed countries. It is also about 85per cent of the GDP of India.</p>.<p>The numbers paint a grim picture of the power and control exercised by a super-minority of the super-rich, leading to an unprecedented concentration of wealth that inflicts structural violence and in-your-face manifest violence that is tearing society apart – a toxic mix of economic violence and the concentration of wealth, which then fuels and funds armed conflict of the kind the Israel-US are now engaged in against Iran. In a reinforcing feedback loop, the war machine feeds into the digital-military-industrial complex that profits as enemies are conjured up and destroyed in what are mostly one-sided, push-button wars that have killed an untold number of innocent citizens.</p>.Artemis and the great Moon race.<p>The thinking that delivers violence across borders brings violence within borders, evident in the rising inequity and inequality that erodes opportunity, reduces life expectancy, and most severely affects the poor, women and girls, and radicalised groups. Consider Oxfam data that 20 of the richest billionaires are estimated on average to emit 8,000 times more carbon than a billion of the poorest. Further, economic sanctions have brought misery that may be worse than overt killing by the war machine: a much-cited report by the journal Lancet last year noted that unilateral economic sanctions lead to about 564,000 excess deaths around the world each year. The study analysed the health impact of economic sanctions using a dataset of age-specific mortality rates and sanctions events for 152 countries from 1971 to 2021.</p>.<p><strong>Lens on the India model</strong></p>.<p>While the Oxfam report should shock the conscience and initiate corrective actions globally, it also carries special implications for India. India has witnessed growing inequality, fuelled by policies that created a new class of the super-rich who wield undue influence in policymaking. The 2024 working paper (‘Income and Wealth Inequality in India, 1922-2023: The Rise of the Billionaire Raj’) by Thomas Piketty and others from the World Inequality Lab reported that “India’s modern bourgeoisie is now more unequal than the British Raj”, wondering “how long such inequality levels can sustain without major social and political upheaval”. The paper detailed data that showed the rise of top-end inequality has been particularly pronounced in terms of wealth concentration between 2014-15 and 2022-23. But it is a sign of the times that the report did not stir policy debates, let alone action, and remains a forgotten red flag as India pushes ahead with its goal of expanding from the fourth to the third-largest economy.</p>.<p>Following the dominant American narratives and mimicking its politics of domination or its business lessons of unbridled shareholder capitalism — while mouthing pious but hollow approaches to equity, sustainability, or fairness — will erode the Indian ethos. It will tear apart the oft-cited values of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam and lead to a plunder of resources and all the attendant ills that undue wealth concentration has brought to the United States and its policymaking. What the Oxfam global report shows is a failing global order, a tear in the social fabric, and the inevitability of violence that will eventually consume not just the poor but also the rich and the super-rich. <br>Rewarding greed while ignoring moral obligations central to issues like fairness or distributive justice has a practical downside.</p>.<p>This offers a different lens and raises concerns about India’s newfound closeness to the US and Israel. While presented as a strategic geopolitical partnership, this closeness also carries the burden of buying into the American ideological Kool-Aid and ceding India’s wealth of wisdom to a policy machine that eventually has only interests, not friends. India’s model, therefore, cannot be the failed US model with its rising inequality and growing structural violence within its borders and military violence outside.</p>.<p>Yet, the signs of rising inequality are everywhere in India today. From private equity increasingly ruling hospitals to galloping fees at schools run in air-conditioned rooms, from unemployed youth in poorly paid food-delivery jobs to the deteriorating condition of public hospitals, passenger trains, and buses, India runs the risk of deteriorating from a socialist set-up to a would-be market economy after the 1991 economic reforms, and now to a de facto market society. As Prof Michael Sandel explains, a market society is one in which everything can be bought for a price, whereas a market economy is a tool for organising productive activity. This cannot be the destiny of India, where dharma comes before artha.</p>.<p><strong>(The writer is a journalist and faculty member at SPJIMR; Syndicate: The Billion Press)</strong></p><p><em>Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.</em></p>
