India has more affluent households than many European countries, finds study

Nevada: India and China have overtaken many European countries in the number of affluent households, according to a new Global Affluent Investor study by leading market research company TNS.

India appears in the top five countries where the affluent have more than 1 million dollars investable assets on average, study points out. Reg van Steen, TNS Director Business and Finance, comments: “…emerging markets will become new centres of affluence in coming years. India and China have already surpassed major European markets like Germany and France”. But there is big contrast in wealth distribution as only around one percent are affluent in India. Among 80 percent if affluent households in India, men are the primary decision makers. Indian investors are keen investors in precious metals, study adds. Meanwhile, Indo-American statesman Rajan Zed, in a statement in Nevada (USA) on Sunday, said that although India was on track to become a global power, but her new prosperity had remained evasive for many. Despite economic miracle, many Indians still lived in desperate poverty. Inequalities in opportunities blocked poor people from participating in the growth process and they remained trapped in vicious cycle of poverty. It was blight on a country, which prided herself on having joined the league of hottest growth economies. Zed, who is Chairperson of Indo-American Leadership Confederation, also appealed to India’s billionaires/millionaires, who had enormously benefitted from India’s economic growth, to pledge some of their wealth to charitable causes aimed at poverty eradication. Quoting scriptures, Zed said that charity was a duty, which should be undertaken with sympathy and modesty. Zed urged India to wake up and deal with her monumental poverty crisis at an emergency level as according to an estimate, about one third of world’s poor lived in India. ANI