Progressive taxation, wealth tax and inheritance tax: Why India needs them?

Taxes on wealth and inheritance will be sufficient to fund basic health care for all and education up to secondary for all Indians, writes Gopi Karunakaran.

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THE history of the people of the world is a history of inequality and domination by the rich. However, there has been a fight back by the subaltern classes against it over the centuries.

Since the end of the 18th century through the 19th, there has been a tendency towards equality but it was limited in scope. The slave revolt in Saint-Domingue, now Haiti, in 1791, spelt the beginning of the end of the trans-Atlantic slavery system.

It was the peasant revolts of 1788–89 and the French Revolution that led to the abolition of the privileges of the monarchy, the nobles and the Catholic church.

I must confess that our world, however unjust, is more egalitarian than that of 1918 or 1950.

The inequality and the domination of the rich are linked to the development of Western industrial capitalism. This is closely connected with the systems of the international division of labour, the uncontrolled exploitation of natural and human resources, the military and colonial domination of the European countries in Asia and Africa, and the technological and financial innovation that resulted from that. It is difficult to understand inequality without understanding the colonial heritage.

Equality is first of all a social, historical and political construct. Equality is closely associated with property and income. Jean Jacques Rousseau explained that private property and the immoderate accumulation of wealth are the origins of inequality and discord among people.

This inequality leads to political and social discord. According to Karl Marx, property is a social relationship historically constructed and instituted under the aegis of the State and the propertied class.