Renowned French Economist Thomas Piketty, met with Kerala chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan who was on a tour to Paris. Piketty has expressed interest to study the Kerala model in economic growth and to submit recommendations for strengthening the state´s economy.
Kerala CM had an hour-long discussion with Piketty and Prof. Lukas Chancel. Prof Lucas Chancel, co-director of the World Inequality Lab and of the World Inequality Database at the Paris School of Economics has made notable research on economic disparity in India
Pinarayi discussed the government´s efforts to improve health and education sectors. Kerala CM also expressed his concerns over rising economic inequality in society and discussed the measures Kerala government is taking to counter them. The government is focussing on bringing the marginalised sections of the society into the mainstream.Kerala has also adopted social welfare pension scheme for people in unorganised sector which is a model for whole country.
Piketty suggested measures like property tax, land tax and imposing more tax on the rich to counter economic inequality. Kerala CM has invited Piketty to visit the state and analyse the economic inequalities and suggest remedies.
Thomas Piketty is a French economist whose work focusses on wealth and income inequality. He is a professor at Paris school of economics and distinguished professor at London School of Economics. His book Capital in the Twenty-First Century came out in 2013 and quickly became a best seller. It brought the conversation back to the themes of wealth concentrations and distrbution over the past 250 years. The book argues that the wealth inequality is worsening in the developed countries and proposes global wealth taxation as one of the measures to address the problem.
Piketty has also advised the Congress party on the minimum income guarantee scheme `NYAY´. Piketty argues that Indian elite have treated the poor badly and its high time to move to the politics of wealth redistribution.
Pinarayi Vijayan is on a 13-day-long four-nation European tour. He has been to Switzerland, Netherland and France. He visited UK, France, Netherlands and Switzerland before returning on May 20.
