Direct Cash Transfer to Resolve the Crisis of Income Inequality

Income refers to the monetary returns that a person gets in the form of wages, salaries, interest on savings etc. for some investment of work or for selling a product or rendering a service. Having a sizable sustainable income to take care of your daily needs and protecting your interests in the years to come is the most basic aspiration of every citizen in this world. Income Inequality is one of the worst social security problems the world is facing at this moment. According to the survey released by Forbes in 2017 , the top three richest individuals in terms of net wealth in the United States, namely Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Warren Buffett, now own more wealth than the entire bottom 50 percent of the American population combined, which is approximately 160 million people or 63 million households. The scenario in India is ever worse. According to the recently released study by Oxfam in 2017, the top 1% in India owns 73% of wealth. The same scenario was 1% of the richest earning 53% wealth in 2015 according to Credit Suisse. The popularity of the Occupy Wall Street Movement testifies to the fact the issue of income inequality finds support across borders, ideologies, political affiliations and internal socio political scenarios. If we don't reverse this trend now, wealth will keep accumulating in the hands of the fewer and fewer individuals, a trend which we have been witnessing through the decades. Without the basic availability of minimum credit, the income gap is bound to widen and wealth concentration is going to increase. Measures like the Microcredit revolution started by Grameen Bank under Mohammad Yunus and the direct cash transfer schemes are some attempts to relieve the world of the most important social security problem in from of mankind : Income Inequality. Governments around the world have tried to resolve the issue of low income people with ventures like income redistribution, subsidies, reservation etc. but have been skeptical about the DCT. The advantage of the DCT is that the rich will continue having a great share of the world's wealth but will help lift several poor individuals from poverty. The paper discussed the viability of the direct cash transfer mechanism to effectively tackle the issue of income inequality. Kshitij Naikade"Direct Cash Transfer to Resolve the Crisis of Income Inequality" Published in International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (ijtsrd), ISSN: 2456-6470, Volume-2 | Issue-4 , June 2018, URL: http://www.ijtsrd.com/papers/ijtsrd14344.pdf http://www.ijtsrd.com/humanities-and-the-arts/political-science/14344/direct-cash-transfer-to-resolve-the-crisis-of-income-inequality/kshitij-naikade