Oxfam India’s “Survival of the Richest: The India Supplement” reveals some stark findings proving that the gap between the rich and the poor is indeed widening. “Survival of the Richest” is published on the opening day of the 2023 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Elites are gathering in the Swiss ski resort as extreme wealth and extreme poverty have increased simultaneously for the first time around the world in 25 years. Some of the key findings from the India supplement are that the top 1 percent in India now owns more than 40.5 percent of total wealth while the bottom 50% of the population (700 million) has around 3 per cent of total wealth; Since the pandemic begun to Nov 2022, billionaires in India have seen their wealth surge by 121%, or INR 3608 Crore per day in real terms (Around INR 2.5 crore every minute); The rich have done well for themselves, while the number of hungry Indians has increased from 19 crores to 35 crores. The report also highlights how progressive tax measures can help combat inequality in India but that is a matter of government policy and is not within the scope of this column.
The extreme disparity shown above in India, in all probability, parallels the situation here in Nagaland as well. It will not be wrong to say that the disparity between the rich and the poor in Nagaland is getting beyond scandalous. The only disparate situation is that no one in Nagaland has done any scientific inquiry yet into the widening gap between the rich and the poor. A casual observation of the living standards of the people is enough to tell the economic inequality and disparity between the rich and the poor, the rich becoming much richer and the poor becoming poorer and poorer. This brings us to the question of why journalists and scholars are not doing the research on issues of such critical importance to our society. There is no readily available data and no published work or research on this issue by economists, sociologists and other scholars in respect of Nagaland. If there are any, they are not easily or publicly accessible. The same goes for most other critically important subject matters that are of significant importance to our society. In the absence of such systematic, scientific study or empirical research, journalists are given to depend on secondary data which often do not reflect the real scenario. Broadly speaking, one of the reasons why our scholars do not undertake such research works could be our education system which is mainly degree or job oriented. Our education system is perhaps only good enough to produce scholars with a degree, enough only to qualify them for a job, and nothing else. It is common sense that an ever widening gap between the rich and the poor, the haves and the have nots, does not augur well for any given society. It is here that scholars need to research and present their findings on the causes, the multi-level impact it has, and the measures to contain it. As long as there are no reliable studies and formal investigations, we will remain in a state of perpetual ignorance of what is ailing our society until it is too late.