An inconvenient truth

India is one of the most unequal countries in the world — the richest 1 per cent own 60 per cent of its wealth

G. Wilkinson describe the “pernicious effects that inequality has on societies: Eroding trust, increasing anxiety, and illness, (and) encouraging excessive consumption”. Their analysis demonstrates the strong correlation between higher levels of national inequality and a wide range of health and social problems, from poorer physical and mental health to higher rates of drug abuse, teenage pregnancies and violence. More worryingly, rising inequality is a major driver for the emergence of authoritarian leaders, championing a divisive agenda poisoned by sectarianism, xenophobia and nationalism. Rising inequality is fuelling conflict, both the incidence of crime in our daily lives (so vividly captured in Aravind Adiga’s White Tiger, where the protagonist, Balram Halwai, a village boy, ultimately kills his master and steals his money) and full-scale civil conflict and war.

Inequality corrodes the fabric of a society that is crucial for all people to feel they belong to it and have a stake in a shared future. Social scientists refer to this connectedness as social capital. It acts as an invisible glue that binds us all together, both rich and poor, through good times and bad. It is this communion of hearts and minds which promotes individual, and ultimately, societal well-being. In short, inequality destroys the soul of nations, of societies, of communities and, ultimately, of every individual’s well-being. Note the use of the word “every”; for this adverse impact is not only experienced by the poor (although they do bear the worst consequences), but also the richest. For the person who is hiding his face behind the newspaper and Looking Away (the title of Harsh Mander’s powerful book on this subject), inequality is bad for you too.

It is not surprising that reducing inequality is one of the UN Sustainable Development Goals which India has signed up to. And, indeed, inequality can be reduced, but it requires strong political will to do so. A number of middle-income countries have managed to contain and even reduce income inequality while achieving strong growth performance, belying the belief that inequality is inevitable while India struggles to achieve a basic standard of living for her population. It is a mystery why no political party championed the cause of reducing inequality (which is distinct from reducing poverty) in the last Lok Sabha elections and they are not doing so in their campaigns for the forthcoming elections.

Perhaps this is because inequality is an inconvenient truth in the saga of India’s shining future, one which everyone would prefer to ignore — not least because no one wants to promote policies which might hurt their own financiers. But there is no escaping the inconvenient truth that there will be no shining future if inequality is not arrested. We need a political consensus, to act with urgency, to reduce the grotesque levels of inequality which not only threaten our vision for sustainable development, but grievously insult our very humanity.

The writer works with the Public Health Foundation of India and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine