'It's flawed': Nirmala Sitharaman dismisses World Inequality Report terming India 'poor'

Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday dismissed the World Inequality Report that termed India as a "poor and very unequal" country. Disregarding the global report as “flawed”, she raised questions about its methodology. 

“World Inequality Report terming India as ‘poor and very unequal country’ is flawed, based on questionable methodology,” Sitharaman said during a Rajya Sabha session.

The World Inequality Report 2022, which was published in December 2021 by the World Inequality Lab in France, positioned India as a poor and very unequal country, with the top 1% of the population holding more than one-fifth of the total national income and the bottom half just 13 percent.

Global report flags income & gender inequality in India

The report also pointed out that the average national income of the adult population in India is Rs 2,04,200, and the bottom 50% earns Rs 53,610. Despite this, the top 10% of the population earns more than 20 times or Rs 1,166,520.

The World Inequality Report 2022 also estimated gender inequality in global earnings, showing that women in India received only 18.3% of the labour income in 2020. This is almost half of the share that accrued to women in other developing economies such as Brazil (38.5%) and China (33.4%), as well as the global average (34.70%).

These, adding to other contributing factors, led to India's positioning in the report as a 'poor' and 'very unequal' country, with an affluent elite population, it said. 

The report was authored by Lucas Chancel, co-director of the World Inequality Lab, and coordinated by a number of specialists, together with French economist Thomas Piketty.