New Delhi: Benefits of India’s fast growing economy has not percolated down to the country’s grassroots where ‘50 per cent earns less than the global average of its peers’, according to a report based on World Inequality Report 2026 (WIR).
World Inequality Report 2026, collated by the Paris-based World Inequality Lab, a network of over 200 researchers, points to India’s asymmetrical trajectory in terms of sharing its wealth, The Indian Express reported.
The WIR data showcases that India’s top one per cent amassing an income share of 22-23 per cent, despite the country is touted to be the fast growing economy.
The report in the newspaper authored by Deepanshu Mohan and Ankur Singh—former the professor of Economics and dean, O P Jindal Global University alongside being a visiting professor at the London School of Economics and the latter a research analyst at the Centre for Economics Studies, O P Jindal Global University—claims that benefits of India’s growing economy have ‘largely bypassed the base’.
India’s ‘skewed’ wealth outcomes show that the top 1 per cent holds nearly 40 per cent of the country’s total wealth, leaving the bottom half with ‘negligible sliver’.
The WIR pins down on the crucial point that India’s middle 40 per cent gets only about 30 per cent of total income which is ‘significantly lower than the 40-45 per cent seen in more equal economies’.
The report claims that instead of building a ‘broad-based consumer class’, India has ‘dual economy’ of ‘a tiny, hyper-prosperous elite and a vast, struggling majority’.