Why this fuss about income inequality?

Most Indians do not care about the income gap between the top 1 per cent and the rest. They have their own logic that merits listening

India has always had income inequality. In the past, it housed a large swathe of the world’s poor, and now it also houses some of the world’s richest, and many in between. This columnist, a homegrown, non-economist people researcher, struggles to understand the expectation that moving from socialism to capitalism should have decreased income inequality, despite the starting point of a steep pyramid on income and human development parameters.

 After 1991, a smaller group with skills, assets, education and enterprise, set free with the world as their oyster, seized the opportunity and made quantum leaps in income and wealth.  A much