Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday said income inequality will reduce gradually and that there is a process that is underway. He said if there were only five rich people, then how come so many people in India were doing marriages abroad?
He was responding to a question on a report that said income inequality is rising in India.
"Should everybody be poor? Everyone should be poor, then there will be no difference. This was the case in the country earlier. Now you say that everybody should be rich, so it will happen gradually not overnight. Some will come, they will bring those who are below. Those who will come a little higher will pull up others. So there is a process," the Prime Minister said in an exclusive interview with India Today's News Director Rahul Kanwal.
"So either we decide that we all want to remain poor. There are two options, one if everyone gets ten rupees, and you have to survive on ten rupees. Another one is that we should try and move forward. Today we will make ten, tomorrow it will increase to a hundred, then the day after tomorrow, it will become five hundred. There were a few hundred start-ups and now there are 1.25 lakh start-ups, so progress is happening," he said.
To back his claim that prosperity has increased, the Prime Minister cited demand in the aviation sector. Earlier, he said the number of people boarding an airplane was few, today an order had been booked for one thousand new planes. "Today we have around six hundred - seven hundred planes government and private combined together, now there are one thousand new airplanes got booked, which means the prosperity has increased," he said.
"Today, People are paying for Badrinath Kedarnath Yatra. From where do they get the money? Yes, they must be getting from somewhere, if I have money then I do it, that number has reached crores. People are going abroad for marriage. If there were only five rich people then how the people of India would get so many marriages done abroad...that is why I said 'Wed in India'," he said.
"Because that they are prospering they feel like going abroad. They feel they have not seen Chennai and want to see Singapore now. So we should see it in the right way," the Prime Minister added.
In the ongoing elections, the Congress and other opposition parties have flagged income inequality in the society, saying it has increased under Prime Minister Modi. Former Congress chief Rahul Gandhi recently promised to carry out a financial survey to know who is holding how much wealth. He said once the survey is done, his party will take "revolutionary actions".
The BJP has, however, rejected his claims that inequality is rising in India.