Rich Indians own 40% of wealth in extreme inequality under PM Modi

India's inequality gap has widened sharply during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's decade in power, with the richest 1 per cent of the population now owning 40 per cent of the country's wealth, a new study has found.

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The top 1 per cent, or about 9.2 million people, earn 22.6 per cent of total income - the highest share since data going back to the 1920s - and hold more than 40 per cent of the wealth in the world's fifthlargest economy, according to a study by economists, including renowned inequality expert Thomas Piketty.

The growth comes mainly at the expense of the middle class, they said. "The 'Billionaire Raj' headed by India's modern bourgeoisie is now more unequal than the British Raj headed by the colonialist forces," the authors wrote.

They warned that further divergence in inequality may fuel social unrest in the country.

The inequality gap widened after the economy's opening up in the early 1990s, but "between 2014-15 and 2022-23, the rise of top-end inequality has been particularly pronounced in terms of wealth concentration", the researchers said.