INDI Alliance's PM candidate Rahul Gandhi has promised that his alliance, if voted to power, will conduct a country-wide financial and institutional survey to determine who possesses how much wealth. Once this is done, the redistribution of wealth will take place. Wealth will be transferred from the rich to the poor.
What could this mean? Here are some broad points that emerge from his poll promise:
1. The wealth owned by the rich and the upper-middle class will be ascertained. Their bank balances, etc will be determined by mining extensive financial data available from banks.
2. Once the exercise is over in a span of a year or so, the rich and the affluent will be taxed heavily. If you are, say, an IBM employee earning Rs 50 LPA, you could end up paying Rs 30 lakh as income tax. The money will then be used to fund a scheme whereby the women in each family across India will be given Rs 1 lakh per annum. The cost of this scheme is estimated to be about Rs 10 lakh crore!
3. If your business makes a turnover of Rs 5 Cr per annum, you could be asked to shell out half your profits to fund some other eccentric social sector scheme.
Critics argue that the redistribution of wealth is a dangerous Marxist idea that has resulted in economic ruin across societies. The middle-classes would get disillusioned with the Indian growth story if Congress were to follow an extreme form of socialism.
