New Delhi: The 2020s are a decade of crisis, the relief NGO Oxfam said in its latest report, arguing that the world today faces a fundamental choice between ushering in an age of “billionaire supremacy” and repurposing the economy to serve the interests of the many.
The opening statistic of this report, titled ‘Inequality Inc.’, is that since 2020, five billion people – 60% of the global population – grew poorer but the world’s five richest men doubled their wealth.
Oxfam also estimated that if the wealth of the five richest billionaires continued to rise at the same rate as it has over the past half-decade, the world will see its first trillionaire within ten years.
“However, we will not eliminate poverty for 230 years,” it added.
In just three years, the world has seen a global pandemic, war and a cost-of-living crisis, Oxfam said, adding that these did not just widen the gulf between the rich and poor, but “between an oligarchic few and the vast majority”.
The NGO said that increasing monopolisation had “supercharged” global corporate power, which it described as pursuing higher returns to shareholders above all other goals.
It went on to identify four ways in which corporate power fuelled inequality: forcing wages down and directing profits to the super-rich; avoiding taxes; privatising public services; and driving (and spinning the truth about) climate change.
Oxfam highlighted how the latter two ways could drive inequalities along gender, race, caste or class.
In the case of privatisation in India, it said that Dalits faced higher costs and overt discrimination in the private healthcare and education sectors.
Oxfam also said that while the World Bank’s private sector arm had invested over half a billion dollars in India’s private health sector, it has “not published a single evaluation of its health projects in India since these started over 25 years ago.”
“Supporting private healthcare in a context where 37% of Indians experience catastrophic health expenditures in private hospitals appears to run counter to the World Bank Group’s focus on poverty reduction,” it had said in an earlier study published in June.
It also said that this arm of the World Bank had invested in high-end urban hospitals in India, adding that several such hospitals had consistently failed to provide free care to the poor despite being required to do so in return for receiving subsidised government land.
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Near the end of its report, Oxfam called on governments to reduce wealth inequality by creating a dynamic and effective state, reining in corporate power and freeing businesses from “shareholder greed”.
“This is not radical. What’s radical is letting such extremes persist,” said Rebecca Riddell, one of the report’s authors, on X (formerly Twitter).
Amitabh Behar, Oxfam International’s interim executive director, also emphasised the need to rein in “runaway corporate power”.
“We have the evidence. We know the history. Public power can rein in runaway corporate power and inequality – shaping the market to be fairer and free from billionaire control,” he was quoted as saying by an Oxfam press release.
He continued: “Governments must intervene to break up monopolies, empower workers, tax these massive corporate profits and, crucially, invest in a new era of public goods and services.”