Worrying math.

"India is home to 1.4 billion people but around a billion lack money to spend on any discretionary goods and services." "The country's consuming class...is only about as big as Mexico, 130-140 million people, according to a report from Blume Ventures." And, the consuming class "is not 'widening' as much as it is 'deepening'," which means "India's wealthy population is not really growing in numbers, even though those who are already rich are getting even wealthier." BBC. Partly because, "Successful corporate professionals and startup entrepreneurs are on the prowl for a new home - and, preferably, a new passport - somewhere in the West." They are buying into "'invest and migrate' programs in the US, Europe's rich neighborhoods and even the Gulf." ET. "Corporate India is riding a wave of record breaking profits," "with the profit-to-GDP ratio hitting 4.8% (in 2023-24), more than double the 2.1% recorded in FY 23." "But while corporate profits surged by a staggering 22.3%, employment grew by a meager 1.5%, leaving millions of workers out of the prosperity loop." Mint. While southern states like Tamil Nadu and Kerala have per capita incomes close to that of Indonesia, "Uttar Pradesh and Bihar are poorer than Nepal." But even in Tamil Nadu there is gross inequality between the rich and the poor, wrote Rathin Roy. CEO compensation in the IT industry has skyrocketed, with former CEO of Wipro Thierry Delaporte earning 1,702 times and CEO of Infosys Salil Parekh earning 700 times the median remuneration of workers. TOI. To mitigate the distress due to the lack of jobs, the central and state governments have rolled out a slew of welfare schemes. There are 323 Direct Benefit Transfer schemes from 54 ministries of the Central government. dbtbharat.gov.in. In addition, "The Economic Survey of 2022-23 had pointed out that as of December 2022, there were more than 2,000 such schemes run by state governments," wrote Vivek Kaul. The result of the prolific handouts is that, ""Labor is not willing to move for opportunities...Maybe their local economy is doing well, maybe it is due to various government schemes & DBTs (direct benefit transfers) available to them, but they are not willing to move," CEO of Larsen and Toubro SN Subramanyan said recently". Now President Donald Trump is forcing India to cut tariffs on imports from the US, which is going to be good for the country, according to Niti Aayog CEO BVRSubramnyam. TOI. The problem is that if the government cuts tariffs on imports it will have to cut goods and services tax (GST) on Indian products. The government lost over Rs 1 trillion in revenue in 2020-21 because of the reduction in corporate tax rate in September 2019. ET. Income slabs for personal income tax have been widened in this year's budget. ET. Lower income tax for individuals and companies, huge spending on handouts, lower collections from tariffs and, if GST rates have to be cut as well, where will revenue come from? Expenditure may need to be slashed. That will increase inequality. Worrying.