The saying, “It is not he who doesn’t have wealth that is poor, but it is he who desires more that is poor,” as a philosophy of life may neither go down well with the former nor convince the latter. We often hear from knowledgeable quarters that India is a rich country of poor people, a view that briefly portrays its population as a mix of billionaires and masses that are not sure of where from their next meal is materialising. Economists have a simple term, namely inequality, that has endured from times spanning several centuries past. The Italian Statistician and Sociologist Corrado Gini (1884-1965) proposed a measure, known as Gini coefficient to represent the dispersion of income earned by a nation’s residents. His index, published in 1912, is the most commonly used measurement of inequality. Its value at zero expresses perfect equality, meaning, everyone has the same income. A Gini coefficient of 1 (or 100 per cent) expresses maximum inequality, meaning, only one person has all the income and all others have none. However, values of the coefficient close to 1 are very unlikely in practice and also, the measure says nothing about the specifics of the income distribution among the large number in the target population.
The feature of inequality, particularly in the matter of possessing wealth, doesn’t seem to have spared even divine characters that are mentioned in the epics of the land. How that perky phenomenon was dealt with by humane acts such as charity makes a fascinating read but may not convince many wealthy individuals in our times.
