Two Percent Courage: Mamdani Shows the Way, Will Rahul Follow?
In New York, Zohran Mamdani shook the status quo by demanding a 2% tax on millionaires to fund public welfare. In contrast, Rahul Gandhi’s Congress promised much to India’s poor but sidestepped a direct challenge to the wealthy elite. It’s time to be unapologetic about taxing the rich to uplift the rest.
Zohran Mamdani captured the public imagination in New York City because he dared to propose a 2 percent super-tax on the super-rich. There is a lesson for the Congress Party and Rahul Gandhi.
When the Congress Party promised in its 2019 election manifesto to give Rs 1 lakh annually to the poorest 20 percent of families as a guaranteed additional income, while retaining the existing welfare schemes, the ruling BJP dismissed it as an impractical idea, saying the country cannot afford such extravagant expenditure.
The Congress’s revolutionary idea of a guaranteed basic income for the poor, unfortunately, didn’t get enough traction because the leading opposition party didn’t spell out how it would raise the resources for the same. It appeared, the Congress was reluctant to say upfront that it would levy higher taxes on the super-rich to provide for the basic subsistence of the ultra-poor.
That’s because somehow’ taxing the rich’ reminds one of the nightmare of the so-called ‘Socialist Paralysis “ that afflicted the Indian economy in the 1960s and 70s. But then that was a different era; the 85 percent tax that was levied then on the highest income bracket was a sure recipe for disaster. But 30% tax on the top-end of the income slab ( Rs 24 lakh and above) today doesn’t raise the hackles.
Why couldn’t the Congress Party say categorically that it would impose a 2% surcharge on those having an annual income above Rs 1 crore? Why should it be browbeaten by the vested interests which crow that even a marginally higher tax would drive the rich out of the country?
In America too, the Democratic Party, supposedly the party of the underprivileged, has often baulked at the idea of taxing the rich. But Zohran Mamdani refused to be boxed into the equivocation trap; he put it down squarely that he would if elected as mayor of NYC, raise the corporate tax by 4.5 percent and impose a 2 percent surcharge on the income of those earning above one million dollars a year.
All hell broke loose within the Democratic Party itself. The protagonists of the status quo — who say the rich must do what they can, the poor must suffer what they must — have rekindled the fear that wealthy New Yorkers will vote with their feet. Our own Shekhar Gupta, a passionate defender of the status quo, castigated the Mamdani proposal as suicidal for NYC ( in his Business Standard piece yesterday).
But someone who genuinely believes in economic justice must follow through with such bold, disruptive ideas, despite stiff opposition. Mamdani, of course, is no trailblazer of this progressive platform. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have been quite vocal about it for many years. Among the younger lot, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ( popularly known as AOC) is another self-proclaimed Democratic Socialist who gives defenders of plutocracy sleepless nights. No wonder, Donald Trump called them all “Communist Lunatics.”. Mamdani is the new star on that progressive horizon that holds out the hope for an egalitarian America.
There is a lesson here for the Congress Party in general and Rahul Gandhi in particular. Gandhi has talked openly about crony capitalism under the Modi regime, and how Adani and Ambani have captured the national assets, thanks to their links with Narendra Modi since his Gujarat days.
It’s time for Rahul Gandhi to raise the spectre, follow the advice of Thomas Piketty, and unapologetically talk about imposing a super-tax both on the income and the wealth of the richest one percent of the country; he must promise to spend that money to provide a guaranteed income to the bottom 50 percent of the population. That would make India a just and fair nation.
