ISSN (Print) - 0012-9976 | ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846

WealthSubscribe to Wealth

Tax Privileges Undermine Tax Equity

The Pandora Papers reiterate how tax havens continue to derail the global tax system.

 

Environmental Accounting in India

Does the present income accounting system represent the real value of the wealth of the economy? If not, how do we evaluate the performance economy? How can the present evaluation method accommodate different aspects of the economy, society, and the environment? If these aspects are not considered in the evaluation process, can it be justified socially or environmentally? In this paper, we discuss the limitations of conventional income accounting, recent developments in environmental accounting at the international level, the progress and challenges of environmental accounting in India, and the way forward.

 

The Lost Decades

The government must reimagine the fundamentals of the economy in favour of equality.

 

The Fallacy of Trickle-down Economics: Whom Does ‘Wealth Creation’ Benefit?

While the theory of “trickle down” of wealth to the poor is often invoked to support the government’s neo-liberal policies, such as tax cuts and other financial incentives for the private sector that benefit the rich, in reality, such policies have not been successful in bridging economic inequalities.

Recent Trends in Wealth Inequality in India

An analysis of the trends in wealth ownership and its inequality in India between 1991 and 2012 using three rounds of All-India Debt and Investment Survey data reveals a greater concentration of wealth with the top 10%, particularly after 2002. A dramatic shift in the decile-wise patterns of annual growth rates of assets in favour of the top deciles, particularly the topmost, has also been witnessed. The study considers the extent of wealth inequality by sector, state, and social and religious groups as well. It is hypothesised that the rising levels of wealth inequality are deeply linked to the growth strategy being followed, by which the gains from growth have been redistributed among those who were already wealthy.

Migration, Bachelorhood and Discontent among the Patidars

Juxtaposing data collected in the 1950s with data from 2013, this paper describes some of the consequences of a crisis of agriculture in India as a crisis of values and aspirations. Among a relatively prosperous Patidar community in western India, agriculture continues to be economically remunerative while farmers are considered poor. Instead, the ability to secure a job away from land, to move out of the village and possibly overseas have come to constitute new markers of status in a traditionally competitive society. The paper departs from common representations of the caste as an upwardly mobile and successful group, and focuses instead on the discontent and on those who try to achieve the new values of the caste, but fail. As a consequence of failure it shows how Patidars recur to what, from an outsider's point of view, may seem paradoxical: in order to "move up" and participate in the culture and economy of the caste, they have to "move down." In this respect, the paper also contributes to understanding the unevenness of India's growth and the contrary trends that work both to strengthen and weaken caste identity.

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