According to economist Gautam Sen, wealth redistribution as a concept would be difficult to implement in India and unlikely to succeed. He claimed that executing this will bring the economy to a halt, and that he cannot see this occurring in a country like India.
In an interview with ANI, political economist and author Gautam Sen stated that the practical execution of a wealth redistribution legislation would be extremely difficult. "As previously said, only roughly 12 crore people have wealth in excess of Rs 102 crore each. However, practically all of them have invested in their enterprises. So you'll have to liquidate their enterprises to steal their fortune," he continued. He noted that local retailers, repair shops, and so on would only be about Rs 3-5 crore each.
"All of these people will have to give up everything they own. Now the economy will come to a halt. Even if that were not the case, small and medium-sized enterprises are India's largest single employer outside of agriculture. These folks in India have one major issue that the government is attempting to address: a lack of financial flow. They receive their revenue in the future and must pay their expenses upfront. These people will strive to squeeze every last penny out of their cash flow to meet the demands of an inheritance tax, which means they will be unable to operate at all. But even that will not be enough," said the economist, adding that the revenue earned from "anybody who has stuff," which would be less than 1.5 percent of the population, would still be insufficient to improve the lives of the remaining 98-99 percent. Sen, a former member of the Indo-UK Roundtable and Senior Consultant at UNDP who retired from the London School of Economics, also stated that this study would need to be conducted every two years, which would be impractical.
According to the economist, India's redistribution has improved over the previous decade as a result of increase in real goods such as road networks, water, sanitation, healthcare, and subsidized gas.
Gautam Sen praised the Modi government for increasing the welfare of the underprivileged. He predicted that improvement would be modest because a country cannot immediately have 15% growth. "But if we achieve 8 percent growth you will see a massive difference in 10 years in the welfare of the poor people," he stated. Sen further stated that the very rich, such as the Ambanis, Adanis, Mahindras, and Tatas, would flee from India to Dubai because there is no income tax there. He predicted a massive loss of wealth for India.
