Daily Practice Sheet 20 November 2021

Almost two thirds of Indian agriculture is rainfed.
The average holding size stands at just 0.9 ha (2018-19). His latest Situation Assessment Survey of the NSO reveals that the income of an average agri-household in India was only Rs 10,218 per month in 2018-19.
The average operational farm size in India today stands at 1.13 hectares. What is more worrying is the fact that small and marginal holdings constitute almost 90 per cent of our total agricultural land holdings. It is also more illustrative to note that the top 10 per cent of the households are today cultivating almost 50 per cent of India’s total cultivable lands whereas the bottom 50 per cent are cultivating less than 0.5 per cent of India’s cultivable lands.

Inequality

A 2018 Oxfam report revealed that 10 per cent of the richest Indians garnered 77.4 per cent of the nation’s wealth (compared to 73 per cent the year before).
In fact, according to the report, 58 per cent of India’s wealth was in the hands of one per cent of the country’s population (about one per cent of the world’s population controls 50 per cent of the world’s wealth). The combined income of this handful of people in 2017 was almost as much as India’s budget that year. In 2017, the fortune of India’s 100 richest tycoons leaped by 26 per cent.
The IIFL Wealth Hurun India Rich List of 2019 identified the 953 richest families in India. It revealed that their fortune represented more than 26 per cent of the country’s GDP — which meant that a tax rate of four per cent on the nation’s 953 richest families would give the government the equivalent of one per cent of India’s GDP.
According to Crédit Suisse, the number of dollar millionaires in India has jumped from 34,000 in 2000 to 7, 59,000 in 2019 — in other words, the country has one of “the world’s fastest-growing populations of millionaires”. The average wealth of these millionaires has increased by 74 per cent over this period.

CSE 2021

Mains OPTIMA 2021

Day 11