Between 1953 and 1985, India implemented various progressive taxes on personal wealth. I use estate tax returns to compute top wealth shares (top 1%, top 0.1%, and top 0.01%) over 1966–1985; a period marked explicitly by a dirigiste policy environment. These new series suggest that wealth concentration in India reduced substantially during the 1970s. Although the decline affected the entire top 1%, the losses faced by the top 0.01% were especially large. Combined with identical trends in top income shares, it appears that the 1950–1980 expropriations of India’s rich had similarities to institutional transitions and shocks faced by European elites in the early to mid twentieth century.

在1953年至1985年之间，印度对个人财富实行了各种累进税制。我使用遗产税申报表来计算1966-1985年的财富最高份额（分别为前1％，前0.1％和前0.01％）；由原住民政策环境明确标记的时期。这些新系列表明，印度的财富集中度在1970年代大幅下降。尽管下降影响了整个收入最高的1％，但收入最高的0.01％面临的损失尤为巨大。结合最高收入份额的相同趋势，似乎表明1950-1980年对印度富人的没收与制度转变和20世纪初至20世纪中叶欧洲精英所面临的冲击具有相似之处。