‘Top 1% holds 40% of wealth…’: Financial analyst warns India’s wealth gap is worse than British era

When Hardic Joshi sat the latest numbers from the world’s inequality database, he expected to find a growing gap. What he did not expect is a blatant figure that he would force him to compare modern India with a painful separation in its past.

“In some ways, it is worse than British rule,” Mumbai’s financial analyst has written in a leaflet that has gained strength on LinkedIn since then.

It was referring to the income of India and inequality in wealth, which, according to a new research, exceed the levels that were seen during the colonial times. Joshi refers to Income and wealth inequality in India A report from the World inequality database (2024), studies from India today and the world’s work paper to experience inequality as evidence of the anxious division.

Data draws a blatant picture: the highest 1 % of India’s population now has 40.1 % of the country’s wealth, while the lower half is only 6.4 %. Meanwhile, the top 10 % take more than 57.7 % of national income.

“Half of the country is fighting for crumbs while a small part lives in an unimaginable luxury,” Joshi wrote, echoing with a feeling of frustration and warning.

In his analysis, Joshi defines five main reasons behind inequality in India:

• Tax policies that are highly wealthy.
• Weak work laws that leave workers open and unsafe.
• Unifying companies suffocation of small companies.
• High gains in real estate and stock markets that are largely equivalent to those who already hold capital.
• Political donations and pressure that keep the interests of the wealthy are firmly protected, which prevents major reforms.

For Joshi, this is not just an economic erosion – it is a deliberate system. “This inequality is not an accident. It is a policy,” he asserts, and he raises the blatant question: “Why doesn’t anyone do anything?”

His argument is that the power structures in India flirt with this defect. “They finance the elections. They are the media of the media. They are pressing against redistribution. They convince the middle class that helping the poor is” bulletins “while taking tax subsidies and definitions.”

At the heart of his attention, there is a basic belief: India does not suffer from a lack of wealth – it suffers from how to divide that wealth. “We produce enough wealth. We do not share it fairly,” he wrote.

For Jochi, the road forward is clear, but it represents a political challenge: “The true political will to impose taxes on wealth, enhance work rights, invest in health and education for all, and reduce companies’ concentration.” Without these steps, he warns that inequality will only deepen – and with it, fractures in the most populated democracy in the world.