Citing the latest Oxfam report on inequality in the distribution of wealth in India, former Congress chief Rahul Gandhi on Monday alleged that Prime Minister Narendra Modi ‘extracts from the country’s poor and gives it to his crony capitalist friends’.
“Modi extracts wealth from India's poor and gives it to his crony capitalist friends & the big power brokers he's dependent on. 1% of India’s super rich, now own 4 times more wealth than 1 billion of India’s poor,” Mr. Gandhi said on twitter.
The former Congress president tagged a news report on the latest inequality report, released by Oxfam ahead of the World Economic Forum (WEF) that attracts world’s top business leaders.
The Oxfam report claimed that India’s richest 1% hold more than four-times the wealth held by 953 million people who make up the bottom 70% of the country's population.
The report, titled ‘Time to Care’ claimed that the total wealth of Indian billionaires is more than the full-year budget.
The report also said the world's 2,153 billionaires had more wealth than the 4.6 billion people who make up 60% of the world population.
Ahead of the Budget session of Parliament that gets underway on January 31, Mr. Gandhi will address youth and students at a rally in Jaipur where he is likely to raise issues related to economy, unemployment, the ‘attack’ on students across campuses, apart speaking against Citizenship Amendment Act.
Congress General Secretary and Rajasthan in-charge Avinash Pandey met Mr. Gandhi to work out the details of the rally that has been scheduled for January 28.
In a separate development, Congress president Sonia Gandhi constituted committees for better coordination between the party and the Congress-ruled States of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Puducherry where all senior leaders from a particular State would be interacting closely with the government.
She also announced the setting up of Manifesto Implementation Committee to improve delivery of election promises in Congress-ruled States. While former Finance P. Chidambaram will head such a committee for Punjab, former Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan will head the manifesto implementation committee for Madhya Pradesh, former union ministers Jairam Ramesh and Verappa Moily would will be in charge of Chhattisgarh and Puducherry respectively. Former Lok Sabha MP Tamradhwaj Sahu will head the panel for Rajasthan.
