We know who’s poor. Do we know who’s rich?

India knows how to count the poor. From ration cards to multi-decade surveys such as the National Sample Survey (NSS), there are sophisticated systems to track deprivation — who’s getting by, who’s falling behind, who needs support.

But when it comes to the rich — or even just the securely well-off — we’re oddly clueless.

This isn’t just a data oversight. It’s a conceptual blind spot in how we think about economic life. In a country where inequality is widening and wealth is concentrating, we still don’t have a clear picture of who’s doing well, how they live, and what that means for the rest of society.

What people own — and what that ownership says about their place in the social and economic hierarchy — is one of the most revealing indicators we have. Research by this author suggests a way to access and use that information.

The rich are hiding in plain sight

Affluence is everywhere — in the high-rise towers of Gurugram, the global luxury brands in Delhi’s malls, the soaring numbers of Indians flying business class, sending their kids abroad, or buying second homes. India has more than 1.4 million dollar-millionaires, according to the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Report 2023 — and yet, we don’t have reliable public data on what they earn or consume.

That’s because our national surveys were never designed to study affluence. The NSS, for example, tracks consumption patterns, but its focus is primarily on essential goods. Surveys like the India Human Development Survey (IHDS), one of our most comprehensive, only recently started collecting income data, and even then, it’s plagued by underreporting.

In India, talking about money is still uncomfortable. People are hesitant to disclose income, especially if it’s informal, untaxed, or variable. Wealthier households — the ones we most need to understand — are also more likely to skip or fudge those questions.

So, researchers often use consumption as a proxy. But consumption data can’t distinguish between spending on basic needs and luxury indulgences. It also fails to explain long-term economic stability. You can’t study wealth by looking at what someone spent last week.

This leaves us with a glaring gap: if income is unreliable and consumption incomplete, how do we measure affluence?

What you own tells a better story

The core idea in Asset Index as an Indicator of Household Permanent Income in India: Comparison with Total Expenditure and Income, is simple: instead of asking how much people earn or spend, we look at what they own. Durable goods like air conditioners, cars, refrigerators, mobile phones — combined with housing quality and land ownership — tell us a lot about long-term financial stability.

Using data from two phases of the IHDS: 2004-2005 and 2011-2012 we constructed a Weighted Asset Index (WAI) — a composite score based on household assets and amenities. Then, the study tracked how well that score held up over time, compared to reported income and total consumption.

The results were clear. The asset index was significantly more stable across the two survey waves, capturing the kind of permanent income economists care about — the kind that influences how people plan, invest, and live over time.

It also avoided the cultural awkwardness of asking about income. People might not say how much they make, but they’ll easily tell you if they have a washing machine or piped water.

This approach builds on earlier work by economists like Deon Filmer and Lant Pritchett, who used asset indices to study poverty in data-poor settings. But here, the focus flips: we use assets to understand the affluent, not just the deprived.

Asset-based measures also offer a more consistent view of household status across contexts. For instance, in rural areas where income is seasonal or informal, assets can reveal long-term economic standing more reliably than temporary income spikes or lulls.

This isn’t just about better data — it’s about power

Measuring affluence isn’t just a methodological refinement — it’s fundamental to understanding the politics of inequality.

If we don’t know who the rich are, we can’t tax them fairly. We can’t assess whether subsidies are regressive. We can’t design targeted social programmes that distinguish between those struggling to survive and those comfortably coasting on generational wealth.

As economists Thomas Piketty and Lucas Chancel emphasised in their Indian Income Inequality (2017), India faces a stark data vacuum at the top of the income distribution. While poverty is meticulously documented, wealth remains understudied — fragmented across sources, inconsistently reported, and often hidden behind private databases or corporate structures.

Economist Shruti Rajagopalan has similarly argued that India’s tax system fails to reflect real wealth. High-income individuals often restructure or obscure their earnings, placing large portions of economic activity beyond the reach of formal taxation. Without systematic visibility into affluence, inequality debates become lopsided — overly focused on bottom-up deprivation while ignoring top-down concentration.

Public narratives around wealth don’t help much either. They tend to rely on spectacle — Ambani weddings, unicorn IPOs, private jets — rather than hard data. Even environmental discussions often overlook this asymmetry. A 2021 analysis published by Manu Moudgil highlighted how the top 20% of high-expenditure households in India are responsible for seven times the emissions of the poorest groups, yet this carbon inequality rarely features in mainstream climate policy debates.

As explored in journalist Snigdha Poonam’s 2018 book, Dreamers: How Young Indians Are Changing Their World, rising consumerism is reshaping the aspirations of rural and small-town youth. Many young men invest in branded fashion, smartphones, motorcycles, and coaching classes — often borrowing heavily — to project an image of success aligned with urban ideals. Yet, our national data systems remain poorly equipped to capture these deeper cultural and financial shifts at scale.

Without better tools to study affluence, we’re left with an incomplete picture of inequality — and an even weaker foundation for building equitable, sustainable policy.

From poverty-centric to affluence-aware

This doesn’t mean we abandon the focus on poverty. But we must recognise that inequality is a relationship, and to understand who’s at the bottom, we need to study who’s at the top.

A truly inclusive policy framework must account for both deprivation and privilege. That means: updating national surveys to track discretionary and luxury consumption; normalising the use of asset indices as proxies for long-term wealth; integrating psychological and sociological insights into economic surveys, and using this data to inform tax, welfare, and climate policies that reflect actual economic realities.

It also means asking harder cultural questions. Why do we consider it impolite to talk openly about income, yet feel comfortable displaying wealth so lavishly at weddings? What does it say about changing values when luxury car sales surge, even as fewer Indians buy their first affordable cars? And why has the rapid rise of a consumer class — so central to India’s growth story — gone largely unmeasured?

Affluence-aware research can help answer these questions. It can uncover the hidden assumptions that shape not just policy, but politics, aspirations, and class identity.

Because India’s economic future doesn’t hinge only on who is lifted above the poverty line — but also on how far others stay above it, often invisibly.

Soumyajit Bhar is Assistant Dean of Admissions and Outreach and a founding faculty member at the School of Liberal Studies, BML Munjal University.

This article was first published under Creative Commons by 360info.

(Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH).