The richest one percent of India’s population owns over 40 percent of the country’s wealth while the poorest half has just 3 percent. Wealth inequality in India has only sharpened since the pandemic, and the number of billionaires rose from 102 in 2020 to 166 in 2022, according to an Oxfam report titled ‘survival of the richest’. This means “exceptionally poor diets, increase in debt and deaths” among India’s poor, according to the report.
