The poor became poorer while the rich became richer in India during 2021, says a survey by Oxfam International.
Indian billionaires increased their wealth by 39 percent in 2021 and are getting richer at a much faster pace, but the poor saw their annual income drop by 53 percent and are still struggling to earn a minimum wage and access quality education and health care, the report revealed. Titled “Inequality Kills: India Supplement 2022,” the report said that the richest 98 Indians own the same wealth as the bottom 555 million people.
Indian billionaires grew from 102 in 2020 to 142 in 2021 even though the country witnessed yet another year of pandemic. This was also the year when the share of the bottom 50 percent of the population in national wealth was a mere 6 percent.
The combined wealth of the richest 100 Indians on the Forbes list stands at more than half a trillion US dollars. There were only three women among the 100 richest Indians.
India had the third-highest number of billionaires in the world, just behind China and the United States. It now has more billionaires than France, Sweden and Switzerland combined; indeed, there was a 39 percent increase in the number of billionaires in India in 2021. In 2020, India’s top 10 percent held close to 45 percent of the country’s national wealth. The Oxfam report once again confirmed that while India is one of the fastest-growing economies in the world, it is also one of the most unequal countries with inequality continuing to rise sharply for the last three decades.
Since 2015, more and more of India’s wealth has gone to its richest one percent. Globally, too, wealth increased during 2021 to make the world’s billionaire elite richer when common people struggled against the pandemic for the second consecutive year.
“The massive gap between rich and poor will continue to increase to unimaginable proportions if the elected representatives of people in parliament do not take their job seriously,” said A.C. Michael, convener of the United Christian Forum. This deliberate inequality was bound to continue, said Michael, a former member of Delhi Minorities Commission.
“The massive gap between rich and poor will continue to increase to unimaginable proportions if the elected representatives of people in parliament do not take their job seriously,” said A.C. Michael, convener of the United Christian Forum.Top of Form

The Delhi chapter of the Indian Christian Women’s Movement (ICWM) has demanded immediate reinstatement of the rape survivor nun in her congregation.
The movement, representing women from various Christian denominations across the country, on January 22 met Archbishop Anil J Couto of Delhi to present him a statement to pass on to Apostolic Nuncio Archbishop Leopoldo Girelli.
The statement refers to the victim in the historic nun rape case where Bishop Franco Mulakkal of Jalandhar was accused of raping a nun multiple times inside a convent in Kerala, southern India.
A court in Kerala on January 14 acquitted the prelate saying the prosecution failed to prove his guilt.
The ICWM-Delhi statement asserts that the movement “stands in complete solidarity with the victim/survivor nun who broke the silence against continuous abuse and exploitation by Bishop Franco Mulakkal” of Jalandhar.
“As women, we are feeling completely outraged and humiliated by having to prove our pain and trauma, time and time again. We are sick and tired of proving why there was a delay in filing a report. Why there was a delay in speaking up? How could we endure it for such a prolonged period of time? Because it has been instilled in us to respect the men of cloth.”
The statement points out that the bishop and nuns have “a fiduciary relationship” and the prelate should have protected those serving the Lord under him. “Instead, women in the Church are feeling unsafe and vulnerable, open to abuse in their congregations and Churches. Anyone who dares to speak against the powerful men of cloth are isolated, neglected and targeted for speaking up,” the statement bemoans.
Observing that “this travesty of justice and denial of respect to women in the Church has gone on long enough,” the movement demands an end to “inappropriate behaviour by priests, Bishops and any other in power.”

The Indian Christian Women Movement, an ecumenical group, has issued an open letter addressed to the leaders of various Churchesin the country.
We, as women of the Chur-ches, waited for the verdict impa-tiently, we were so sure that the accused will be indicted.
In our estimation, all evidence pointed to the guilt of Franco Mulakkal. All that remained was for the guilty verdict and for the Church to acknowledge its connivance and announce, in no uncertain terms, its agreement with the strongest punishment that he deserves.
But, this was not to be. Mulakkal was acquitted of all charges; and the survivor Sister was left to deal with the consequences of crimes she did not commit.
In the text of the judgment, as submitted to the court, words have been written about the nun; intimate details enumerated which should shame every Christian woman, let alone a sister who has dedicated her life to obedience and submissiveness to authority in the church.
Her defence was downplayed and she was left in the lurch by the Church. This has been the most difficult – feeling let down by the Church to which she had avowed allegiance.
For us as women of the Church this betrayal has been the most painful to accept. We call on the leadership of the Church to account for their attitude ever since the survivor Sister courageously spoke out about her ordeal. The Church did not react as it should have – letters of appeal she sent to the leadership of the Church were ignored; the church remained silent in the face of her humiliation in the court.

A Catholic nun was arrested in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu after a 17-year-old girl died by suicide.
The girl took poison January 9 at her hostel at Michaelpatti in Thanjavur district, and died 10 days later.
Sister Sahaya Mary, the 62-year-old hostel warden, was arrested under the Juvenile Act apart from charges of abetting suicide. The place is near Poondi Madha shrine that comes under the diocese of Kumbakonam.
A report in ndtv.com says the girl took poison alleging abuse by her hostel warden and an attempt to convert her family to Christianity.
“In an unverified video that has surfaced after her death, the girl says she may have been harassed and abused because her family refused to convert to Christianity,” the report says.
The ndtv.com report says the news organization could not independently verify the video that surfaced after the girl’s death. Jesuit Father Arockiasamy Santhanam, spokesperson for the National Lawyers Forum of Religious and Priests, says the First Information Report does not mention conversion. “It is the cook up story by the Hindutva elements,” he told on January 21.
According to him, the police had gone to the hospital to collect the girl’s statement.
The priest also explained that the girl had lost her mother eight years ago and her father married another woman.

Support and sympathy for a Catholic nun continue to pour in even a week after a court in Kerala dismissed her case against a bishop.
Additional District and Sessions Court Judge G. Gopakumar on January 14 acquitted Bishop Franco Mulakkal of Jalandhar in the historic nun rape case, saying the prosecution had failed to prove the charges against him.
The nun, a former superior general of the Missionaries of Jesus, a Jalandhar diocesan congregation, had in June 2018 accused Bishop Mulakkal of raping her 13 times between 2014 and 2016.
“When it is not feasible to separate truth from falsehood, when grain and chaff are inextricably mixed up, the only available course is to discard the evidence in toto,” said Judge Gopakumar in his verdict.
“In the said circumstances, this court is unable to place reliance on the solitary testimony of a rape victim and to hold the accused guilty of the offences charged against him. I accordingly acquit the accused of the offences,” the judge added.
After the verdict was pronounced, Bishop Mulakkal came out of the court saying, “Praise God.” His supporters hail the verdict as a victory for the Church since those behind the case were its enemies. The prelate reportedly offered Mass in a charismatic retreat center and visited people who had supported him in the media.
However, the verdict sent shock and disbelief among women across the country.
Astrid Lobo Gajiwala, a Mumbai-based woman theologian, says that the judgment is “a huge deterrent to rape survivors coming forward to seek justice, especially in the Church.”
“It tremendous courage for a Catholic nun to go public about being raped by a bishop, in a Church that claims its hierarchy is divinely instituted,” explains Gajiwala, who claims to be aware of “the prolonged physical, psychological and financial toll that this case has taken on the survivor and her supporters. It is unimaginable that she would go through this if it were not true.”

Christians in India on January 8 expressed relief and joy over the federal government decision to restore the Missionaries of Charity’s license to receive overseas funds.
The “most welcome” news, says Sister Dorothy Fernandes, national secretary of the Forum of Religious for Justice and Peace, an advocacy group for Catholic religious, responding to the official nod for renewing the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) certificate of the congregation founded by Saint Mother Teresa of Kolkata.
The federal Ministry of Home Affairs on January 7 restored the 71-year-old congregation’s registration, which is mandatory to receive donations from overseas.
“If there is anyone serving selflessly the most unwanted of our society it’s the Missionaries of Charity Sisters and Brothers,” asserts Sister Dorothy, the Patna-based member of the Presentation congregation.
Brinelle D’Souza, chairperson of the Centre for Health and Mental, School of Social Work under the Mumbai-based Tata Institute of Social Sciences, too says the Teresa nuns work “with the poorest of the poor on issues where even the state is absent.”
Father Anand Mathew, a social activist in Varanasi, says the license restoration has brought “immense relief to so many of us.” The member of the Indian Missionary Society says he and other activists in Varanasi have been mobilizing the civil society to support the two homes managed by the Teresa sisters in the ancient city.
Sister Jessy Kurian, a Supreme Court lawyer, welcomed the news saying “finally justice is done.” The registration renewal shows that the government has not only recognized but reaffirmed the selfless service being rendered to humanity especially to Indian people by the Teresa nuns, she told Matters India.
The ministry December 25, 2021, stated that it had not renewed the Teresa congregation’s FCRA registration since it had received “some adverse inputs” about the nuns’ activities such as indulging in religious conversion. The registration was valid only until October 31, 2021, but extended it for two more months, the ministry added.

Since Christmas, the Missionaries of Charity have been strictly rationing the food and daily use items for their regular 600 beneficiaries at their motherhouse and Shishu Bhavan, a children’s orphanage, in Kolkata. On Jan. 2, the breakfast of tea, bread and eggs was cut short by an hour. “As long as you did it to one of these, my least brethren, you did it to me,” said Razia, a beneficiary of the Missionaries of Charity, as she waited for the nuns to give her the weekly provisions. She lives with her two sick children across the road from the motherhouse and says she visits the tomb of St. Teresa and prays for the “difficult times to pass.” Abdul Razzak, a 45-year-old beggar, stays put outside the motherhouse curled in his rags. He has been staying there since Christmas in hopes of getting his share of food and medicine. A few others like him sit along with him to receive their subsidy from the nuns. Since the pandemic began, they received their daily meal from the motherhouse, but now “sisters told us that we might not be able to collect the food any longer,” said the sick man.