Average tax payer will need to work over 300 years to match an MP's assets

The wealth gap between Lok Sabha MPs and their constituents may have just widened.

The average assets of a Lok Sabha MP is now 345.8 times that of the annual income of a tax filing individual. This means that it will take the average tax payer 345.8 years to earn the equivalent of the assets of the average Lok Sabha MP.

This is only marginally worse than before. It was 299.8 times in 2014. Income tax data for previous years was not available.

The data is based on gross total income based on income tax statistics. Gross total income includes all income claimed by individuals including salary, business income and rent, among others. The analysis used 2016-17 (FY17) numbers, the latest available. The asset details are based on the latest affidavits of MPs based on data collated by non-governmental organisations National Election Watch and Association for Democratic Reforms in their periodic reports.


The average assets of MPs have risen at an annualised rate of 7.3 per cent between 2014 and 2019. Gross total income of individuals who filed income tax returns grew slightly slower at 7.2 per cent between FY14 and FY17, while average gross total income rose from Rs 4.9 lakhs to Rs 6 lakhs. The average MP’s assets rose from Rs 14.7 crore in the previous Lok Sabha (2014-2019) Rs 20.9 crore in the latest one (2019).
The 7.3 per cent rise in an average MP’s assets may have outstripped the pace at which the salary of the income tax filing individual. This is because the average salary income of tax filers rose 5.9 per cent between FY14 and FY17, while average business income rose 8 per cent.

Assets of re-elected MPs grew slower

As many as 225 MPs have been re-elected to the Lok Sabha this time.
A comparison of MPs who have been re-elected shows that growth in their assets is lower, at 5.1 per cent annually, than that of the average tax filing individual. This means that the rise in average assets of MPs may have been driven by newly elected MPs rather than the re-elected ones.
This also seems to be borne out by another statistic in the report. The number of MPs who have declared assets of more than Rs 1 crore has risen over the past three Lok Sabha elections. It was 58 per cent in 2009, rose to 82 per cent in 2014 and was 88 per cent in 2019.
One caveat in the numbers is that tax figures for 2017 may have changed by 2019, but tax filers are typically wealthier than the average Indian.

“The per capita net national income during 2018-19 is estimated to be Rs 1,25,397,” according to a government statement in January this year. This is less than a quarter of the average gross total income used above, which would mean that the gap may be wider for the public at large.
Research has suggested that the wealthy tend to have different attitudes towards public issues than the majority, and that they exert a disproportionate impact on policy even if they are not part of the government. The wealthy tend to have more conservative views on taxation, economic regulation and social welfare programs, according to a 2013 study entitled ‘Democracy and the Policy Preferences of Wealthy Americans’ from authors Benjamin I Page, Larry M Bartels and Jason Seawright published in the journal Perspectives on Politics.
“We suggest that these distinctive policy preferences may help account for why certain public policies in the United States appear to deviate from what the majority of US citizens wants the government to do. If this is so, it raises serious issues for democratic theory,” it added.