'Inequality' is a word that frequently appears in the media: inequality between two sexes, between different social classes, between old and young people etc. Today I would like to talk about the income inequality in China and India.
In China, the top 1% Chineses pocket 13% of the wealth of the country and in India, the percentage of the resources in the hands of the top 1% is even more glaring: their richnesses pass the total of the rest 73% of the population.
According to a traditional economic theory, the richnesses of a country can be compared to a cake. For increasing the share of everyone, first of all, a big-sized cake should be prepared then it should be divided in an equal way for benefitting everyone.
In these two most populated countries, controversy, income inequality is fuelled up by the economic increase. Admittedly, the economy is soaring in China and India in the last 20 years but the division of the richnesses is far from being fair.
Let's look at an example in Beijing, capital of China: among the skyscrapers of the CBD area in the east of the city, a security guard lives in the basement of a flat, where there is no sunshine or no fresh air. The guard shares a room of 10 m2 with 3 other guys. In this area, the basement is the only 'house' that he can afford. In the same building, a state-owned company manager lives in an apartment with a rent of 7000 $ per month and she told the journalist that she never knew that the basement of the building was the house of someone.
In India, the situation is no better and the income inequality is related to the sex inequality and religion and caste inequality. The woman labour participation is merely 20% and women commit themselves to the household labour that doesn't bring them the income at all. Also in India is seen the income gap between different caste and religious groups: Muslims, Dalits and tribals are the most marginalised.
To bridge the inequality gap, the governments of the two countries have a lot to do:
firstly, the tax system, which is one of the most powerful 'arms', should work efficiently with the correct policy; secondly, more favourable policies in terms of education, medical care etc should be attributed to the marginalised groups; thirdly, a more severe control system should be established for supervising the sources and the destination of the wealth of the top riches.
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