Several reports in the last few months have sounded the alarm about growing income and wealth inequality in India. The statistics cited are not wrong, but they are incomplete. And they have produced sensational, but misleading, news stories.
For example, an article based on Oxfam's recent "Inequality Kills" report notes: "India has the third-highest number of billionaires in the world." The story points out that India has 142 billionaires but ignores that India has 1.4 billion people. Only one in 10 million Indians is a billionaire, whereas such "billionaire density" is eight in Russia, three in Brazil, more than four in China, and 22 in the United States. Likewise, while "India has more billionaires than France, Sweden, and Switzerland combined," in terms of billionaire density, these three countries together have 18 times more billionaires than India.
