SAN FRANCISCO (Diya TV) — Fifty-seven billionaires in India possess as much wealth as the poorest 70 percent of the country, this according to a new report on global inequality from Oxfam, an international confederation of 18 NGOs, that was released Monday.

Citing news reports and its own independent studies, the Oxfam report points to the growing gaps in income equality across the globe.

In India, for example, the chief executive of a leading information technology company earns 416 times more than the company’s average employee. It’s a statistic that’s directly reflected in the country’s wealth distribution — the richest 10 percent of Indians control 80 percent of the nation’s wealth, while the top one percent of the country control 58 percent, according to the report.

Income growth in India has been uneven for a number of years. Between 1988 and 2011, according to the report, incomes of the poorest 10 percent of Indians rose by a mere $29, an annual increase of one percent. However, for the richest 10 percent, during the same time period, incomes increased nearly 25 percent annually.

Oxfam lists a multitude of reasons for this, including crony capitalism and corporations that squeeze employees to maximize salaries and dividends for executives and shareholders. This is only made worse in the country’s current economic framework, according to the report, India’s best hope for wealth growth is for those who actually possess wealth, the country’s richest citizens can afford to seek financial consultation.

Oxfam’s report comes on the heels of an HSBC report that studied social sector spending in the country. The HSBC report, timed between Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s demonetization announcement and the country’s budget announcement, notes that India’s expenditure on social sectors such as health and education is far lower than that of the emerging markets across the globe. Governments tend to ignore such expenditure, the report argues, because their political terms last five years, whereas it takes around six years for the clear benefits of social expenditure to show.