Zoho's Sridhar Vembu offers a lesson in 'Dharma', flags inequality risks in tax models

Zoho co-founder and chief scientist Sridhar Vembu

Zoho co-founder Sridhar Vembu had a cautionary message to share on Thursday: when wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few while the majority have little or nothing, societies are often forced into making difficult—and frequently harmful—choices. Taking to X, Vembu outlined what he described as five potential societal responses to rising wealth inequality.

“When a few people have a lot of wealth and lots of people have nothing, these are the 5 choices societies make, and we see examples of these around the world,” he wrote. He identified the first—and most favorable—option as: “the people with wealth create employment and develop skills in the broader population.” The second, he said, is when “the people with wealth donate to causes that indirectly create employment.”

The Zoho chief scientist noted that both of these approaches are rooted in the principles of Dharma, stating: “Dharma dictates 1 and 2, with 1 preferable to 2. This is also the Biblical injunction to teach a man how to fish.”

The third route involves government intervention, where the wealthy are taxed and wealth is redistributed to the less fortunate—a strategy Vembu regards warily. “Many western societies have picked 3 (tax and redistribute that over time leads to corruption). I suspect 3 leads to 4 and 5 over time, so 3 is an unstable equilibrium.”

The fourth option, he warned, emerges when “extortion networks arise that extort from the wealthy,” often with the support of frustrated citizens. This ultimately leads to the fifth and final outcome: “The wealthy employ vast security forces to resist being extorted.”

Vembu added that financialism separates wealth from employment, through various schemes of monetary alchemy. He said our ancestors understood this intuitively and that is why they disapproved of usury and other "making money on money" schemes. "The nature and character of wealth determine and in turn, are determined by the nature of society - yes, it is a self-reinforcing feedback loop," he said.