How can you find rich people, if the middle class is poor?

"Is India's middle class actually poor?" asked S Biswas. A study by S Krishnan and N Hatekar puts 600 million people, out of a total population of 1,300 million, in the middle class category. They have reached this huge number because they define middle class as those with daily income between $2 and $10 per day, the lower middle living on $2-4 per day and the upper middle on $6-10 per day. At today's exchange rate $10 equals Rs 650, which gives a total income of Rs 2,37,250 per year, below the income tax threshold of Rs 2,50,000 per year. "The composition and character of the new Indian middle class is indeed unique because it now has people who are typically not considered to be belonging to middle class," said Krishnan and Hatekar. Credit Suisse has published a wealth pyramid for India which shows that 92.3% of people have wealth less than $10,000, which is Rs 650,000, or one heart attack, with 3 days in ICU and 2 stents. And all the wealth disappears. Just 7.2% of people possess wealth between $10,000 and $100,000, the majority of whom will be at the lower end. The ICE 360 survey showed that 42% of Indians are self employed, 32% are labourers and 20% are salaried, of whom 16% are Grade IV employees, which means peons or gardeners, wrote P Bhattacharya. Around 70% of salaried people do not have a written contract and so have no guarantee of employment. Although about half the people with low incomes consider themselves as middle class, the majority of people, who are considered rich by income, consider themselves to be middle class. No wonder that only 27.9 million people filed tax returns this year, a jump of 5.6 million from last year, and considered a triumph of the Prime Minister's sudden demonetization of high value notes on 8 November 2016. The Prime Minister is obsessed with black money, vowing to root it out any which way. He is unable to comprehend how more people can travel abroad on holidays than pay income tax. Take the all the rich businessmen and highly paid managers and add all the civil servants, politicians and their families and you will have your numbers. Simple. But, why this obsession? With so many poor people and the need to win elections politicians need to finance a plethora of social schemes. So the government instructed income tax officers to widen the tax base, which means terrorise people into paying more taxes. Sadly, the number of taxpayers may fall as 75,000 have lost their jobs in telecom, and more may go. The Goods and Services Tax, or GST, is a "good and simple" tax, gushed Modi. Maybe, but it is still an indirect tax and will hurt the poor by increasing prices and closure of small enterprises, which employ the poor. Call us middle class, but we are still poor. Numbers tell the truth.