BJP giving a Hindu vs Muslim twist to a socialist idea of redistributing wealth from rich to poor: Swaminathan Aiyar

What do you make of this inheritance tax and is it executable? Is it a sound economic idea?
Swaminathan Aiyar: No, I do not know that this is necessarily an issue about inheritance tax. There has been talk as far as I can see about a wealth tax, about taking a look around and doing a survey. All I can say is that the Congress Party has been a socialist party since 1947. The Constitution itself has a thing about distributing the common resources to benefit the common good. The Congress Party has always been for taxation of the rich to help the dalits, the poorer, minorities. The only thing is that the Congress has always done it in terms of class, rich versus poor. Modi is trying to convert it into a religion issue of Hindus versus Muslims.

Unlock Leadership Excellence with a Range of CXO Courses

Offering CollegeCourseWebsiteNow, while the Congress Party might surely like to do a review of the amount of wealth owned by the industrialist friends of Mr Modi, it is most certainly not going to be snatching the Mangalsutra from every Hindu to give to Muslims, that has never been on its agenda and you know, this is a twist being given to it. But the Congress is a socialist party. However, in the past, it has instituted a wealth tax, so little was being collected that Mr Jaitley in 2016 replaced it with a 2% income tax surcharge, which is probably collecting much more money than the wealth tax ever did.