Searching Alternative
Harsh Facts
Gian Singh
Searching Alternative
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VI
Facts File
Despite promise for heaven, what masters of the current
situation have delivered in this period of three/four
hundred years or more is not promising even a decent
life in peace for 99 percent of all those populating
different continents, equivalent to a virtual hell of sorts.
Heavy majority of them stands alienated and deprived.
By its nature capitalism is an organised system of out
right robbery of commons and human labour-power.
It cannot be otherwise. In its trajectory, the unfailing
idiom is: big fish eats smaller one for growth. The
ground reality speaks volumes about its anti-social
character basically. The available data of economies
amply belies this story of .progress. and stability in the
system with echo in political instability and turmoil in
these leading imperialist countries no less than others.
It is now widely admitted that we live in a world rife
with inequality of wealth, income, power and influence.
It is the underlying cause of deep seated social tensions.
The disparity between the wealthy minority and the
billions living in suffocating deprivation is greater than
it has ever been. Worldwide it is estimated that the
wealthiest 10 per cent owns 85 per cent of global
household wealth. According to Wikipedia as of May
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2005, the three richest people in the world have assets
that exceed the combined gross domestic product of
the 47 countries with the last GDP., and .The richest 2
per cent of the world population own more than 51 per
cent of the global assets..
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development states that income inequality .first started
to rise in late .7 0s and early .80s in America and Britain
(and also in Israel).. The ratio between the average
incomes of top 5 per cent to the bottom 5 per cent in
world increased from 7 8:1 in 1988, to 114:1 in 1993.
One of consequences of this social economic imbalance is worldwide movement of people, from impoverished communities with few employment opportunities, to a rich or richer region or nation. The International Organization for Migration estimates
there to be over 105 million persons [excluding
children] working in a country other than their country of birth. Women make up lions share of this
army of workers, many of whom are vulnerable to
trafficking. The US State Department states that up to
800,000 persons are trafficked every year (althoug the
figure is probably considerably higher): 80 per cent
of victims are women, of which 80 per cent are sold
into the commercial sex industry - particularly a
product of commoditization of women labour and
her physical assets by capitalist economy. For those
with means they are cheap: on average, 90 dollars
will buy you a human being, according to Free
the slaves. Migrant workers form an economic lifeline
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for millions of families. In 2012 they sent, 406 billion
dollars in savings to their families in developing
countries., the World Bank reports. In a world of plenty
there are billions of people vulnerable to such pursuits
merely for survival. The vulnerable and exploited exist
because of an inherently unjust social
economic system, which has caused extreme global
inequality and built a divided and fractured world.
The state establishment everywhere is very alert in
hiding facts from people by falsifying data. Still, ground
reality is too stark to keep under wraps forever. Though
available hard data for developed or developing
industrial countries proves the rising scale in inequality,
let us take the leading imperialist one for scrutiny. An
American, Mr. Paul Buchett (
[email protected])
has recently compiled a few facts this system has
produced (by grace of Nation of change 26 August 2013).
See, some filthy facts about the rich: First of all, who
are they in America .the most industrialized country
and a model of self claimed Western democracy?
Mostly, it is 1% of its population. But the top 2.5%
has also done quite well, increasing their inflationadjusted wealth by 75 percent from 1983 to 2009 while
average wealth went down for 80 percent of American
households. The rest of top 20% have been prosperous,
realizing a 32 percent gain in inflation-adjusted wealth
since 1983. The facts to follow are primarily about
richest 1%, with occasional dips into the groups
scrambling to make it to top. As evidence of the extremes between very rich and the rest of us, average household net worth for top 1% in 2009 was al(3)
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most $14 million, while the average household
net worth for bottom 47% was almost ZERO.
For nearly half of America, average debt is about the
same as average asset ownership. The extremes are
just as filthy at global level. The richest 300 persons on
earth (about a third of them in U.S.) have more
money than the poorest 3 billion people. Out of all
developed and undeveloped countries
with at least a quarter-million adults, U.S. has the 4thhighest degree of wealth inequality in the world, trailing
only Russia, Ukraine, and Lebanon. In another alarming
testament to wealth at the top, richest 10% own almost
90 percent of stocks excluding pensions.
Consider what that means. The stock market has
historically risen three times faster than the GDP itself.
Since recession, as U.S. economy has .recovered,. 62
percent of the gain was due to growth in stock market,
which surged as much in four years as it did during
the greatest bull market in history from 1996 to 2000.
Many stock owners see a couple thousand dollars added
to their fortunes every time they go online. But thats
not enough for the very rich. Thanks in good part to
derivatives market, world.s wealth has doubled in ten
years, from $113 trillion to $223 trillion, and is expected
to reach $330 trillion by 2017. The financial industry
has figured out how to double or triple its buying power
while most of the world has proportionately less.
If the richest 1% had taken the same percentage of
total U.S. income in 2006 as they did in 1980, they
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would have taken a trillion dollars less out of the
economy. Instead they tripled their share of post-tax
income. And then they captured ALL the income gains
in the first two years of post-recession recovery.
Two dependable sources provide pretty much the same
information. Barclays reported that those with earnings
in the top 20% donated on average 1.3 percent of their
income, whereas those in the bottom 20% donated 3.2
percent. And according to New York Times, non-profit
Independent Sector found that households earning less
than $25,000 a year gave away an average of 4.2 percent
of their incomes, while those with earnings of more
than $75,000 gave away 2.7 percent in donations.
In 2012, three members of the Walton family each made
over $4 billion just from stocks and other investments.
So did Charles Koch, David Koch, Bill Gates, Warren
Buffett, and Larry Ellison, Michael Bloomberg, and
Jeff Bezos. India just approved a program to spend
$4 billion a year to feed 800 million people. Half
of Indian children under 5 are malnourished.
It.s not the obligation of any one of these individuals
to feed the world. The disgrace is in fact that our
unregulated capitalist system allows such outrageous
extremes to exist. Here is more to provoke outrage
the 400 richest Americans made $200 billion in just one
year. That.s equivalent to the combined total of the
federal food stamp, education, and housing budgets.
Even all that is not enough for the very rich. About twothirds of nearly $1 trillion in individual tax expendi
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tures (tax subsidies from special deductions, exemptions, exclusions, credits, capital gains, and loopholes) goes to the top quintile of taxpayers. An
astounding 75 percent of dividend and capital gain
subsidies go to the richest 1%.
And that doesn.t include business subsidies, like
the $16.8 billion per year in agricultural benefits paid
out to big companies and to wealthy individuals who
happen to have farms in their portfolios. The filthiest
fact, in terms of detestable extremes, is that much of
Congress wants to cut $4.35 a day food benefit to hungry
Americans, almost half of them children, so that money
can keep flowing to the top.
Instead of investing in new ventures, new plants and
machinery big companies are borrowing huge amounts
at negligible rates of interest to buy back their own
shares. In nine months of 2013 alone $308 billion was
spent for this purpose in USA while unemployment
hovers around 7%. Trade deficit haunts it around $45
billion per month. Imports from China are down
at almost two-thirds.
Another story about America from Jeanna Smialek
on Aug 7, 2014 states: The 1 percent in America is rich
beyond measure, depriving nations of billions in tax
revenue and obscuring shifts in global inequality.
Similarly, research conducted by European Central Bank
economist Philip Vermeulen and London School of
Economics. Gabriel Zucman show the wealth of super(6)
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affluent hidden by tax shelters and non response to
questionnaires is undercounted. Correcting for similar
lapses in income data almost erases progress made from
1988 to 2008 in narrowing the gap between worlds
rich and poor, the World Bank research found.
We always suspected there was some low-balling of
top 1 percent,. said Joseph Stieglitz, a Nobel-prize
winning economist and author of.The Price of
Inequality. Theres a growing sense that our system is
rigged and unfair. The richest of Americas rich, the
top 0.1 percent with at least $20 million in net wealth
. held 23.5 percent of all U.S. wealth in 2012 after
adding in estimates of how much was hidden in offshore
tax havens, said Zucman, a visiting scholar at the
University of California at Berkeley. Another facet of
this American grim reality is summed up in a quote:
.. . in America, we have achieved the Orwellian
prediction - enslaved, the people have been
programmed to love their bondage and are left
to clutch only mirage-like images of freedom,
its fables and fictions. The new slaves are linked
together by vast electronic chains of television
that imprison not their bodies but their minds.
Their desires are programmed, their tastes manipulated, their values set for them . said Gerry
Spence, in From Freedom to Slavery.
Thomas Piketty, author of bestseller .Capital in the
Twenty-First Century,. estimates that out of 7.2 billion
populations in world half is forced to survive on less
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than $2 per day, which is standard poverty line from
World Bank. Most of it lives in India, China, Sub-Saharan Africa where 45% lives on $1.25 per day in 2010.
Oxfam estimates that 1% of world population owns $110
trillion in wealth, which is 65 times of what half of the
population has. What half of world population i.e 3.6
billion have, only 85 people own.
See some other samples, in brief what countries that
went by industrial-commercial pursuits to achieve
prosperity has led them to situations similar to the
leading example of America. It will help to understand
true nature of the myth deliberately created to keep
capitalist road acceptable by the people for progress.
Germany adopted unprecedented dependence on
exports to escape worst of recent crisis triggered by
collapse of Lehan Brothers in 2008: in 2012 Germany
reached a record 44% of its GDP (euro 1.1 trillion) on
basis of holding back of real wages of German workers
at the same level of 1992. AsFT remarked: .Germany
now has the highest proportion of low paid workers
relative to national median income in western Europe.
One quarter of its workforce is on low income wages.
The temporary employees have trebled in ten years.
Britain once gained status of industrial workshop
ofthe world, though not by its own talent and resources.
Now it is on parasitic finance capital and services
simultaneously claiming recovery from impending
calamity of recent crisis. But the country has witnessed
most consistent fall in living standards in recent period
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since 1860. For example, nearly 2 million children go to
school hungry every morning in industrially, commercially
developed Britain .country that led the current fallacious
mode of modern growth to take roots. Result: common
Britons have come down from seventh cloud to earth,
harbouring now a feeling that something is rotten in
the establishment conjuring anti-elite sentiment.
BRICS Group of countries are also going through the
same features oh crisis in economy. China is experiencing slowing down and so India. It is known
that China got muscles in growth of economy at the
cost of cheap labour made available to industrialcommercial concerns. Japan is in no good health of
late. Japan is having a debt of 250% of GDP. Russian
economy depends largely on exports of Oil and Gas
with growth rate at 1%. Russia has now highest level
of wealth inequality in the world, having 110 billionaires
who own 35% of its wealth. Brazil experienced slow
down of its economy in 2011 and 2012.
Greece is having unemployment of 1.4 millions including
two out of three young people. Portugal is suffering
unemployment rate at a record high of 16% with cut
of public sector wages between 2% and 12% per
worker in yearly budget of 2014.
Italy is on the brink with an accumulated debt of nearly
euro 2 trillion and over 3 million unemployed officially,
one million of them young between the age of 25 and
34 who lost jobs in a period of 3 years. In 2012 9 millions
were classified as poor of whom 4.4 million were living
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in absolute poverty. Spain is suffering currently from
unemployment to the tune of nearly 27% of workforce
and debt burden approaching 100% of its GDP. Income Inequality. Survey data on all ultra-rich also
undershoot, foiled in part by small sample sizes, ECB
researcher Vermeulen writes in a July paper. The 1
percent held 35 percent to 37 percent of wealth in
2010, exceeding the 34 percent indicated in the
Federal Reserve.s Survey of Consumer Finances,
Vermeulen found in his paper. A greater concentration
of income and wealth at the top could help explain
why consumer spending has been slow to rebound
from recession that ended in June 2009, according
to Stieglitz. Some of problems in the performance of
economic system are related to the true degree of
inequality, not measured degree of inequality, he said.
Since 18-month slump ended, the Bloomberg
Industries Mass Merchant Index, which includes WalMart Stores Inc. and Dollar General, is up 80 per
cent, less than 109 percent gain in the Standard &
Poors 500 Index. Luxury retailers have flourished, as
evidenced by 254 percent surge in Bloomberg
Industries Global Luxury Goods Index, which includes
companies such as Coach Inc., Hermes International
and Prada Spa. Jeffrey Hollender, who is among
wealthiest 1 percent in U.S., isnt surprised he worlds
richest have even more than currently estimated.
The more money that you have, easier it becomes to
hide that and avoid taxes, said Hollender, 59, cofounder of cleaning and personal-care products
company Seventh Generation Inc.
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The measurement of assets for Europe.s super rich could
be even faultier, according to Zucman. About 10 percent
of their wealth is in offshore accounts compared with
4 percent in the U.S., he estimates in a May pa per.
Very rich people also have wealth in foundations and
holding companies that make calculations difficult, he
said. It is possible that some European countries, like
the U.K. in particular, are almost or even more unequal than U.S., Zucman said, a contrast with
current data that show they are more wealth-equal.
European surveys do less than U.S. surveys to counter
sampling bias and many miss the mark more, Vermeulen
found. For example, Austria.s top 1 percent held as
much as 36 percent of that country.s wealth in 2013, if
adjusted with Forbes. data. That.s 13 percentage points
more than one survey estimate suggests, which would
make Austria almost as unequal as the U.S. Financial
wealth held offshore costs the U.S. government
$36 billion in annual revenue from non- payment of
income, investment, inheritance and estate taxes,
according to Zucman.s paper. That.s enough to
buy lunch for every student in New York City public
schools for over a century. Europe is losing $75 billion.
There are potential implications for tax policy, Zucman
said. If inequalities are higher than we thought,
then maybe it can change views on the extent to
which marginal tax rates should be increased on top
incomes or the extent to which we should use other
tools, like a wealth tax.
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Carl Robits, 34, sleeps on London Wall, one of the main
streets in the City, Londons financial district. He.s been
homeless for about 18 months after a medical discharge
from Royal Anglian Regiment Second Battalion. He was
part of Occupy London movement when it took over
Finsbury Square in 2011-2012. Since then, the systems
not any better, said Robits, who was back at Finsbury
Square last week. Theres too much bureaucracy. Unless you have a drug or alcohol problem, you are not
a high priority. Im not being helped. Im not getting
any form of advice or direction.
Worldwide economy made some of biggest strides in
globalization between the fall of Berlin Wall and start
of past recession, causing living standards to improve
for millions of poor people, including in China and India.
World Bank looked and found there was little progress
in reducing global inequality once adjustments
were made for possibly under counting wealthy.
In contrast with unadjusted figures that show a drop in
disparity, World Banks Gini coefficient measuring the
extent of income inequality barely budged during those
decades, according to preliminary adjustments by
economists Christoph Lakner and Branko Milanovic.
With a top heavy adjustment, the decrease in
inequality . present when we use all other adjustments
almost entirely dissipates, they wrote in a December
paper. That.s surprising for a period when poverty was
falling sharply in World Bank data: number of people
living on less than $1.25 a day dropped to 1.22 billion
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in 2010 from 1.91 billion in 1990 after adjusting for
inflation according to it.
In Independent India position is similarly as dismal
where economic and financial policies are tailored
to favour corporate capital. Following capitalist
mode of development it did not and could not produce socialist pattern of society., despite open
policy decision by highest political leadership. The net
result of this path delivered what it was destined to
produce. A latest example published on 14.08.2014
speaks loud: According to analysis by wealth research
firm namely, Wealth-X of countrys richest individuals 5 top richest individuals led by neo-tycoon Mukesh
Ambani have an estimated net worth of $85.5 billion
(about Rs. 5,23,897 crore) amounting to 47.5% of
Indias total billionaires wealth, Ambani alone owns
$24.4 billion (about Rs. 1,49,474 crore) in personal
wealth. They have expropriated it through their business in sectors like oil, gas, steel and pharmaceuticals
when consumers were made to pay through their
nose. On other hand a mother sells her dear child for
a few hundred rupees to ward off hunger.
On Aug 15, 1955 Prime Minister, P. Jawaharlal Nehru
exhorted when he said from the rampart of Red Fort:
It is very humiliating for any country to import food.
So everything else can wait but not agriculture.
Despite, agriculture stood discriminated in terms of
support. Devender Sharma, an expert on agriculture
affairs commented recently on his blog thus : Farm
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suicides began as a trickle around 1987 or so and since
then have taken a toll of nearly 3 lakh farmers in the
past 17 years. World Bank/IMF and the international
financial institutions began to propose that economic
growth can only take place when fewer people are left
in agriculture. In 1996, the World Development Report
of the World Bank suggested moving 400 million people,
equally to twice the combined population of UK, France
and Germany, from the rural to the urban areas in India
in the next 20 years i.e. by the year 2015.
The IMF/World Bank induced policy of support to
industrial-commercial ventures instead have led almost the demise of support to agriculture that resulted in human tragedy of sorts. In 2013 14, farmers
produced a record harvest of 264.4 million tonnes
of food grains. Production of oilseeds reached a record
high of 34.5 million tonnes, a jump of 4.8 per cent.
Maize production increased by 8.52 per cent to
reach a level of 24.2 million tonnes. Pulses production
reached an all-time high of 19.6 million tonnes, an
increase of 7.10 per cent over the previous year.
Cotton production too touched a record high. With
such record production, the nation should remain
indebted to the virile and hardworking farmers.
But last year, in 2013-14, when farm production
recorded a quantum jump, agriculture
received Rs 19,307-crore from the annual budget kitty,
which is less than 1 per cent of the total budget outlay.
This year, only Rs 22,652- crore has been provided for
agriculture and cooperation departments.
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Again outlay for agriculture remains less than 1 per cent
of total budget. The apathy towards agriculture
continues, although it grew at an impressive rate of
4.1 per cent in Eleventh Plan period (2007-8 and 201112) it received a dismal support of Rs 1 lakh crore.
For a sector which directly and indirectly employs 60crore people, Rs 1 lakh crore outlay for five years is
peanuts. In 12 Plan period (2012-13 to 2017-18)
agriculture is projected to receive Rs 1.5 lakh crore.
Compare this with Rs 5.73 lakh crore tax exemptions
showered on industry in 2014-15 alone. Since 200405, Industry has received tax concessios (computed
under revenue foregone in budget documents) to
the tune of Rs 36.5-lakh crores or Rs1,100 crores
per day for past 9 years. In fact, farmers have
disappeared from economic radar screen., Sharma
comments. Agriculture stands impoverished by
deliberate policy decisions by government that has led
rural economy to the verge of collapse.
The insidious expropriation of unorganised sector, mainly
family farming is truly criminal To illustrate how system
was tailored to work and rob farming through a maze
of contrived policies the following points may suffice:
The mischief was to categorise workmen into
organised and unorganised sectors for purposes of
wage determination. The organised sector comprises
merely 8.5% of the total work force and rest is placed
unorganised.
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1. The organised were further categorised into
trade wise workers for differential wage fixation.
2. Trade wise workers were further categorised
as highly skilled, skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled
for this purpose.
3. Unorganised work force was categorised as
agricultural and non-agricultural
4. Agricultural workmen were categorised as
ploughmen, head-loaders, herdsmen, etc
5. Non-agricultural workforce was categorised
trade wise workers for wage determination.
Likewise, list goes on to keep workforce divided and
rob them by section wise handling of issues arising
of the discrimination so built around. Different
criteria were framed for organised and unorganised sectors in matters of wage determination
and a highly discriminatory wage structure was
formalised. The worst sufferer was the farming sector.
The idea behind, perhaps, was to keep the majority of
w
o
r
k
men deprived of decent wage and create a middle
class comprising of organised sector as a shock absorber
to the system of expropriation for safe sailing. In bonus,
it keeps workmen/women and farmers divided as also
peasant movements fragmented.
Farming was clubbed with unorganised sector, where
working unit comprises labour unit of two adults instead of one as in organised sector against a family.
Farming was declared an unskilled job with the result
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that for fixation of minimum wage rate under the
relevant Act agricultural labour got the last category of
least paid, while fixing minimum support price of
agricultural products family labour was accounted on
the scale the family is supposed to give to agricultural
labour! In the bargain, both stood robbed of a due wage
for the labour put in production.
Family unit in farming sector was declared arbitrarily
consisting of three consumption units instead of five
as in the organised sector. Family labour was counted
for work-hours bureaucracy determines it spent in
farming operations for 156 days in a year through
this mechanism instead of 365 days. For rest days
farming family was deprived of even starvation wage.
Putting together all these subterfuges, farming was made
the worst looser. By such a mechanism rural sector was
deprived of even a living wage and drained it off the
additives it created by their labour to finance the
industrial-commercial sectors.
As a result, cities thrived and village economy collapsed
with hunger and wants lurking around. Agriculture thus
was made to subserve the interest of industry and trade.
1. As organised sector holds complete control on money
system in India and all centres of political and
administrative power belong to it, this elite club
has the last word on distribution of total national
product and takes advantage of its position in
a variety of ways.
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2. The subterfuge is resorted while fixing relative value
of labour input made by different categories of
workmen/women in production by devising highly
discriminatory criteria for workers arbitrarily
categorised sectors as organised and unorganised.
The level of discrimination is unexceptional:
The minimum wages being prescribed by governments
in different states and the centre through legislation
reflect deep-rooted bias of the decision making power
elites exercise against workers in unorganised sectors.
The wage so fixed for a worker in unorganised sector
ranged between 5 to 10 rupees per day in 1986 for the
upkeep of worker family of three units i.e. 2 adults
and 2 minor children, when class iv employee in
organised sector was getting at least four times; perks
and service security fo lifelong was extra bonus.
The central labour commissioner on 1.4.2004
notified a minimum wage of rupees 97.80 per
day for unskilled workers in central undertakings
and class iv regulars were getting 4,721 per month
as ordained by Fifth Pay Commission and not less
than rupees 10,000/ per month under vi pay commission, while 77% of population was living on rupees
less than 20/ per day in 2004-05 according to report
of Commission on Unorganised workers headed by
Arjun Sen Gupta. This disparity is alarming between
organised and unorganised sectors.
To summarise, farming is unskilled work in unorganised
sector where two adults, instead of one in other
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avocations working for maintaining a family of 3 labourunits accounted for 156 days labour in a year. Calculating
input costs for working out Minimum Support Price (MSP)
for agriculture products, thus heavily depressing
arbitrarily the actual income for a farming family.
It was to extract heavily labour-value out of farming
that was ploughed in for financing free industry
and trade sector. It spelt disaster for family farming
and released land for sale to the rich. See an example:
In 1990, the average wage for a farmer worked out at
a rate of rupees 10/- per family per day for 147 (now
156) days in a year. Later, rate was rupees 15/- in 1995,
rupees 35/- in 2007 and is around rupees 75/at present, while class iv employee gets 600/-,
teacher 1000/- district collector no less than 2500 per
day, while there is no limit for corporate honchos,
despite the compelling difference in use value of
agriculture products for food ecurity of the nation.
By one account nearly 7 lakh crores of rupees are
extracted on this account alone from rural sector to
finance the urban sector i.e one crore per village per
year in the country!
A report of CRISIL Research on January, 7, 2014 points
out: non-farm jobs to shrink by 25 pc in 7 years. It
estimates 12 million people may be forced to look for
low-quality, low productivity rural or agriculture jobs
over seven years, a reversal of old trend of migration
from farm to non-farm employment opportunities.
Job generation in the non-farm sector will slow down
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sharply in the coming years. Employment outside
agriculture is expected to increase by only 38 million
between 2011-12 and 2018-19 compared with 52
million between 2004-05 and 2011-12. Due to insufficient employment creation in industry and services
sectors, more workers willn become locked in the
least productive and low-wage agricultural sector or
remain unemployed (emphasis added). Around 12
million people will join farm work force by 201819, compared to a decline of 37 million in agriculture
employment during 2004-05 and 2011-12.
We expect the Indian economy to expand at slower
pace of six per cent per year in FY 2013-19 from 8.5
per cent in FY 2005-12. GDP growth is driven increasingly by less labour-intensive services such as finan
cial, real estate and business services (including
IT-ITES). For eg, in FY 2012, these services, with nearly
19 per cent share in GDP, employed 3 out of 100
workers in economy, said Dharmakirti Joshi, chief
economist, CRISIL.
The great divide between Rural and Urban sectors in
India is widening. As per official data, which is almost
always skewed to buttress success of reform policies,
inequality is not narrowing between these sectors: In
1993-94, average monthly per capita expenditure was
Rs 281 in rural and Rs 458 in urban India. They rose,
respectively, to Rs 772 (+174 per cent) and Rs 1,472
(+221 per cent) in 2007-08, which means that gap
between urban and rural areas has jumped from 63 to
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91 per cent. The gap diminished somewhat between
2007-08 and 2011-12, with rural MPCE reaching
Rs 1,430 (+85 per cent) and urban MPCE rising to
Rs 2,630 (+79 per cent), it remained more than
20 percentage points higher than what it was in 199394, at 84 per cent.
The gap between rural and urban areas has become
particularly pronounced in states where cities have
boomed, like Karnataka, with the Bangalore
phenomenon, and where, the gap between rural and
urban MPCE has increased from 57 to 93.5 per cent.
The trickle-down theory stands fooled.
According to NSS 66th Round repot, Key Indicators of
Household Consumer Expenditure in India 2009-2010,
July 2009-June 2010, average Monthly Per Capita
Expenditure in 2009 10 was Rs 1054 in rural and
Rs 1984 in urba India, that is, per capit expenditure
level of urban population was on an average 88%
higher than the rural. Its key findings were:
Average MPCE in 2009-10 was estimated as
Rs.1053.64 in rural India and Rs.1984.46 in urban
India. Thus the per capita expenditure level of the
urban population is about 88% higher than that of
the rural population. The poorest 10% of India.s
rural population had an average MPCE of Rs.453.
The poorest 10% of the urban population had an
average MPCE of Rs.599. The top 10% of the rural
population, ranked by MPCE, had an average MPCE of
Rs.2517 about 5.6 times that of the bottom 10%. The
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top 10% of the average MPCE of Rs.5863, about 9.8
times that of the bottom 10%. The top 10% of the
urban population had an average MPCE of Rs.5863
about 9.8 times that of bottom 10%.
Furthermore, 40% of the rural population had MPCE
below Rs.800 while 60% had MPCE below Rs.1000.
In a report published in The Hindu on 29 November,
2013. Beyond the debate, govt. accepts 65% Indians
are poor. According to a CRRID survey, Chandigarh in
Punjab 98 per cent rural households are under debt.
Each household has an outstanding debt of Rs 4.79 lakh
or 96.73 per cent of its annual income.
Wealth has grown but mostly gone to the hands of super
rich. The report by Oxfam, titled .Working For the
Few., published ahead of World Economic Forum (WEF)
2014 meet in Davos, said that in India, number of
billionaires increased tenfold in past decade, aided by
a highly regressive tax structure and wealthy exploiting
government connections, while spending on the poorest
remains remarkably low. The gap in incomes is 1:1000.
This gap is increasing with pace of development.
Despite claims from rulers everywhere for a bright
future under present dispensation, life for commoners
is hell for no fault of theirs, except that they believed
their tormentors. They promised honey but delivered
poison while continued to serve capitalist growth
instead clandestinely in the beginning but are doing it
openly since 1991 by narrating its liberating qualities.
It is beyond doubt that present mode of development
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worldwide has led to accumulation of wealth at one
pole is at the same time accumulation of misery at the
opposite pole. leading to constant turmoil, tension and
distress to mass of the people despite honest labour.
Skills too do not pay after a while. The machine works
like this to grind the targets fine and with speed.
In the midst of even a crisis of its own make, the rich
get richer and poor relatively getting poorer. Credit
Suisse in a recent report provides an interesting contrast: 3.2 billion people control $98.7 trillion in
wealth amounting to 41 percent of the world wealth is
in the hands oh 0.7% of the population. At the other
extreme 3.2 billion people control a meet $ 7.3 trillion
meaning thereby that 68.7 percent of world.s adult
population control just 3% of its wealth.
Another report from the same source indicates increase
in the number of dollar millionaires between mid2012 to mid- 2013. See a few cases for example:
Spain 402,000
+13.2%
Us 13,210,000
+ 14.6%
France 2,210, 000
+ 14.9%
Germany 1,730,000 +14.6%
China 1,120,000
+08.7%
It is a malaise of the system and makes little difference
h e re a n d t h e re b y p e rs o n a l i t i es w h o d r i ve .
The sterile system has stopped delivering honey even
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Fact File
to the capitalist class without tears. The crisis is on its
sleeves of its own make with least possibility of delivery
presently, except by accelerating the pace of
expropriation of the masses on hourly basis.
Despite promise for heaven, what masters of the current
situation have delivered in this period of four hundred
years or more is not promising even of a decent life in
peace for 99 percent of all those populating different
continents. Heavy majority of them stands alienated
and deprived. It is not a happy picture. It needs to be
changed and changed for better as earlier as possible.
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