Rising Affluence, Falling Rights: Impact of India’s Superrich on Human Rights of the Poor

This chapter attempts to call attention to the contribution-based and benefiting-based duties of India’s affluents. It locates the deleterious agency of superrich within the structural/institutional processes that undermine, or cause to undermine, the fulfilment of the human rights of the poor. The chapter assesses India’s tax and credit policies to demonstrate how public policies benefiting the superrich can impinge upon the principle of equal opportunity. It assesses mechanisms of tax evasion and embezzlement of funds by the superrich that strangulates the state’s capacity to uphold the human rights of the poor. It also highlights the environmental impacts of the superrich phenomena which burden the poor with increasing social costs of living. The chapter puts forth the argument: that the state is complicit in institutional transgressions against the human rights of the poor, but India’s superrich not only contribute to but also benefits from such institutional processes that perpetuate poverty and inequality. The chapter contends that assessments of global justice duties must extend beyond mere “official disrespect” of human rights and consider burdening the superrich with more stringent responsibilities for alleviating extreme poverty than they currently have.