Income inequality in India: Top 10% upper caste households own 60% wealth -Shreehari Paliath

-Business Standard/ IndiaSpend

Among OBCs and STs too, top 10% had cornered most wealth. Top 10% of both groups held around 52% of wealth in 2012 and top 10% of SCs' share increased three percentage points to 46.7% till 2012

Although India’s upper caste households earned nearly 47% more than the national average annual household income, the top 10% within these castes owned 60% of the wealth within the group in 2012, as per a recent paper by the World Inequality Database.

Further, the wealthiest 1% among them grew their wealth by nearly 16 percentage points to 29.4% over the decade to 2012, the paper, entitled ‘Wealth Inequality, Class and Caste in India, 1961-2012’ and published in November 2018, said.

The vast inequality of income and wealth between and within castes highlighted in the paper are significant in the light of the Bharatiya Janata Party government’s new bill to entitle poorer sections among the forward castes to a 10% quota in government jobs and higher education institutions, which has been challenged in court.

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