Time to Care (Mint)

Mains Paper 2: International
Prelims level: Oxfam report
Mains level: Highlights of the Oxfam report

Context:

• Oxfam International has published its report that underlines what has been said repeatedly by governments, research organisations and a range of multilateral bodies over the past decade or more —that economic inequality, “is out of control”, with extremes of wealth existing alongside great poverty.

Highlights of the report:

Gap between the Richest and the Rest:

• As per the report, India’s richest 1% hold more than four times the wealth held by the 953 million who make up for the bottom 70% of the country’s population and the world’s richest 1% have more than twice as much wealth as 6.9 billion people.
• Nearly half the world is trying to survive on $5.50 a day or less and many people are just one hospital bill or failed harvest away from destitution.
• Taxation System Aiding Inequality: One reason for these outsized returns is a collapse in taxation of the super-rich and the biggest corporations because of falling tax rates and deliberate tax dodging.
• At the same time, only 4% of global tax comes from taxation of wealth and studies show that the super-rich avoid as much as 30% of their tax liability.
• Extremely low corporate taxation helps them cream the profits from companies where they are the main shareholders. This is evident in the fact that between 2011 and 2017 average wages in G7 countries increased by 3%, while dividends to wealthy shareholders grew by 31%.

Women are worse off than Men:

• Economic inequality is also built on gender inequality, and the majority of those at the bottom of the economic pyramid are women.
• Women and girls are more likely to be found in poorly paid and precarious employment, and they do the bulk of unpaid and underpaid care work.
• The dominant model of capitalism actively exploits and drives traditional sexist beliefs that disempower women and girls, counting on them to do this work, but refusing to value them for it.

Leaders are failing to Act:

• Despite the evidence of the corrosive effects of the divide between rich and poor, most world leaders are still pursuing policy agendas that drive a greater gap between the haves and the have nots.
• They are offering policies like tax cuts for billionaires, obstructing measures to tackle the climate emergency, or bolstering racism, sexism and hatred of minorities.

Way ahead:

• Feminist economics and gender equality are fundamental to a human economy and a core part of this new, fairer, human economy is to fully address the role of unpaid and underpaid care work.
• Building national care systems with the full participation of civil society, and in particular women’s rights groups, is a fundamental step in this direction.
• Further, actions to redistribute care work should be part of a comprehensive approach of redistributive policies in order to close the gap between rich and poor.
• The policies should include progressive taxation, free public services and social protection systems and policies to limit the influence of corporations and the super-rich.
• Extreme wealth is a sign of a failing economic system, hence Governments must take steps to radically reduce the gap between the rich and the rest of society and prioritize the wellbeing of all citizens over unsustainable growth and profit, to avoid a world that caters only to a privileged few and consigns millions of people to poverty.

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Prelims Questions:

Q.1) Apiary on Wheels’ is a unique concept designed by:
(a) NITI Aayog
(b) National Highways Authority of India
(c) Bureau of Indian Standards
(d) Khadi and Village Industries Commission

Ans: D
Mains Questions:
Q.1) Oxfam International has released a report ‘Time to Care: Unpaid and Underpaid Care Work and the Global Inequality Crisis’. Highlight the findings of the report along with the measures to reduce inequality.