What Indians Earn Is a Well-Known Unknown

While an income survey is in the works, tax data offers a top view. Yes, our tax-paying base will shrink this year, but we won't lose much visibility—just some sleep over its expansion

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What do Indians earn? If this has the air of a trick question, it is because no satisfactory answer exists. For the most part, we are clueless. Which explains why hope has been pinned on the Union statistics ministry's plan of an all-India household income survey, the first round of which might well be conducted next year.

What surveyed homes say they consume will no longer be all we have to estimate poverty by, and GDP per capita could be pushed back in the box of what exactly it tells us: national output per head. For businesses and investors focused on India as an emerging market, what people at large earn is not as relevant as the earnings of those in the upper zones of our vast pyramid. A fairly clear snapshot of this part, one with its accuracy backed if not assured by law, is captured every year by the Income Tax Department.