That India is reeling under grave inequalities is a matter of shame and grief, but not shock. Data showing widespread inequality in India have been resurfacing time and again over the past couple of decades. The recently released World Inequality Report only offers a fresh insight into a phenomenon that is well-known and accepted by Indians. Incorporation of the impact of the pandemic on prevailing inequality will, however, certainly give policymakers an idea with which to progress into the future. Contrary to our claims of being one of the leading developing economies in the world, the report has clubbed India with the poorest and inequality-stricken nations. It can be said with conviction that India's widespread poverty comes not on account of a shortage of resources — in fact, the country has plenty of that. The issue at hand is that this wealth is distributed among the people of India in the most unequal way possible. One-third of the country's wealth is accumulated in the hands of just one per cent of the overall population. The wealthiest 10 per cent of the population hold two-thirds (65 per cent) of the total wealth of the nation. Conversely, it implies that 90 per cent of Indians are forced to manage with a mere 35 per cent of the total wealth. Even more worrying is the fact that this graph is following an upward trajectory for the last two and a half decades. In 1995, 10 per cent of the Indian population held slightly less than 53 per cent, increasing ever since, despite tall claims around poverty alleviation by governments! To add insult to injury, the wealth of the bottom 50 per cent of the population has been on a downward slide from slightly below 10 per cent in 1995 to slightly above five per cent in 2021. So, we need to draw two separate inferences: 1) Currently, there is a wide gulf between wealthy and deprived sections of the population; and 2) The gulf is widening with each passing year. The period of 2007-2008 has been an inflection point when the differences grew steeply. The report further states that the average wealth of an Indian household is Rs 9,83,010, but a household in bottom 50 per cent of the population holds a mere Rs 66,280 on an average. Apart from wealth, which is more or less a stable parameter, the country does no better in terms of income. As per the report, the top one per cent of the population earns around 20 per cent of the accumulated national income, against a mere 13 per cent by the bottom 50 per cent. This effectively means that half of the Indian population collectively falls far behind earning what one per cent of the population is earning. In fact, earlier this year an Oxfam report on inequality concluded that an unskilled worker in India would take three years to earn what the country's richest person earned in one second in the previous year. Despite being a resource-rich country, such a dismal standing of India in terms of inequality demands critical scrutiny by policymakers and experts. Thanks to the decades of neglect, the challenge of rising inequality stands before us in its monstrous form. Further neglect could just translate into a policy disaster. One of the reasons behind such an unimaginable trend of inequality could be the extremely complex structure of Indian society. The very diversity which is the greatest strength of India could be one of the reasons behind laying the ground for inequality. Inequality in India is multi-layered — it is driven by differential status on the basis of gender, caste, religion, state, region, community and whatnot. The answer to this conundrum lay in accelerating the creation of a level playing field for different sections of society. The World Inequality Report particularly revealed the growing gender inequality in the nation, showing below par involvement of women in the economy. The bigger reason behind India's towering inequality, however, lay in the economic model that India follows. Inequality is generally perceived as a fallout of disproportionate growth in the post-liberalisation world — which was based on the foundations of crude capitalism. The distribution of wealth and income within a particular country is intricately linked with the economic model it follows. The World Inequality Report could well be a hint for Indian policymakers to revisit the growth trajectory and the economic model that the country follows. Negative stereotyping of socialism has distanced us from the idea that cared about the last person and not just the overall growth. Today is the age of hybrid, and India can customize its economic model by picking up the best from the alternative models. To sum up, the numbers revealed by the World Inequality Report are mind-boggling. The report should force us to retrospect and improve as a nation. It is time to accept the harsh realities and build an equitable nation.