Stealth Wealth

A recent paper shows that India's richest report only a fraction of their income and wealth, enabling a culture of tax avoidance

- Parth Singh

If income is one of the loudest signals in a democracy—of ambition, of merit, of contribution—then economist Ram Singh’s recent research paper reveals how that signal can be quietly manipulated or even erased by those who command significant wealth.

In his paper “Do the Wealthy Underreport Their Income? Using General Election Filings to Study the Income-Wealth Relationship in India”, Singh, who is director at the Delhi School of Economics, dives into sworn affidavits filed by thousands of candidates contesting India’s general elections, the Forbes list of India’s richest families and income tax return data. What he uncovers is a vast, hidden architecture of avoidance.

Using real-world data, the study offers an un-comfortable but unavoidable conclusion: the richer a person is in India, the less likely it is they report all earnings. A 1% increase in family wealth, Singh finds, is associated with more than a 0.6% decrease in the income-wealth ratio. Among the top 0.1%, the reported income amounts to less than 2% of their total wealth. For the crème de la crème of Indian wealth—the top ten families on the Forbes list—it’s barely 0.5%.

This isn’t simply about loopholes or clever account-ing. It’s about a structural rot that undermines how we measure fairness in a society. Singh’s study lifts the curtain not only on what is hidden, but also on what is missed when researchers, journalists and governments rely purely on tax liability, inequality and growth data. In India, the numbers speak—but not all of them tell the truth.

Illusion of Fairness

Singh’s methodology uses affidavit data—legal dis-closures that India’s election candidates must submit, listing their income and assets. These declarations, underexplored by scholars, offer a dual lens into both what people claim to own and what they say they earn.