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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Are India’s elite abandoning the country’s poor and vulnerable? -Deepanshu Mohan

Are India’s elite abandoning the country’s poor and vulnerable? -Deepanshu Mohan

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published Published on Feb 15, 2022   modified Modified on Feb 16, 2022

-Scroll.in

At a time when upper classes continue to thrive on waves of profit maximisation, the social and economic safety net of the poor has been gradually eroding.

Amidst all the talk on two Bharats, are we seeing a time horizon where India’s elite may abandon the country’s poor and vulnerable?

This is a question I have been contemplating about for a few months now. My curiosity peaked days after the recent Union Budget was presented: in an analysis of the document I argued that the current government macro-fiscal priorities appear to be blindly indifferent and/or ignorant of India’s poorer, unorganised citizens

For more evidence, see the below-par outlays announced for essential social development priorities in areas of healthcare, nutrition schemes for children and Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act along with a massive cut observed in overall revenue expenditure, all, in the quest to boost growth at all costs.

Putting the nation on a high growth trajectory is of course critical, especially when India’s real growth has been low each successive year over the course of the last seven or eight years. But the quality of growth, and the processes we set in motion for its distribution also matters.

For some time now, the social and economic safety net of the poor and vulnerable across India has been gradually eroding. At the same time, upper-corporate-wealth-endowed (or dependent) classes continue to thrive on waves of profit maximisation even during the pandemic years.

‘Conspicuous consumption’

The real question is: do the elite not care enough about the need for redistribution?

Before one tries to answer the question, it might be useful to first explain what I mean by the words “conspicuous” and “abandon” in context of the behaviour of the elite (often explained as a group or class of people enjoying greater control over the creation-distribution of economic resources).

In 1899, Thorstein Veblen, an economic sociologist, propounded a theory (and idea) of “conspicuous consumption” in context to understanding the behaviour of the leisure class (the elite), their preferences. Veblen argued that wealthy individuals often consume highly conspicuous goods and services in order to advertise their wealth, thereby achieving greater social status.

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Scroll.in, 15 February, 2022, https://scroll.in/article/1016930/are-indias-elite-abandoning-the-countrys-poor-and-vulnerable?fbclid=IwAR0e9tPdPCNvnnlh8WiG4YNfLZOPlViF_THZZyuimKNz_NI1haYpM4DcN9E


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