New Delhi: India's robust economic growth may have led to a sharp rise in per capita income in the recent years, but the earnings of the country's top business executives has risen even more sharply. As per an analysis of the income data provided by the government and the private sector, the country's per capita income grew by 15.6 percent in 2010-11, but the rise in top management remuneration of the listed companies during that fiscal was twice as much at over 36 percent. Increase in the overall employee costs of the listed companies was, however, much closer to the country's per capita growth and rose by 18.6 percent in 2010-11. While some experts do not see any correlation in the per capita income and the salaries of the top executives and say it may not be proper to compare the two, a few others believe that the soaring managerial remuneration could be providing a boost to the country's overall per-capita income levels. The government data last week showed that the country's per capita income cross Rs 50,000-mark for the first time, to Rs 53,331 a year, in 2010-11. In comparison, the average CEO or top-level management salaries in India are estimated at Rs 1-3 crore, although the remuneration levels vary sharply based on the industry type, business size and various other parameters. The average salary would be much higher for the top-paid executives. As per the salary data disclosed by the companies, the average salary of 25 top-paid Indian executives in 2010-11 stood at about Rs 33 crore. Beyond the remuneration income, the wealth of the country's richest persons runs into thousands of crores, but these figures take into account various assets including value of shares in the companies promoted by them. "The salary of CEOs is such a small proportion of the country's per capita income. Even theoretically, CEO salary and per capita income are two different unrelated variables," Krishnamurthy Subramanian, Assistant Professor (Finance) at Hyderabad-based Indian School of Business (ISB) said. "The compensation of CEOs has increased (in recent times), especially in large size companies as compared to small and medium-sized firms," he said. Subramanian noted that the increase in the CEO salaries could also be attributed considerably to the stock markets, since most of the large companies have stock-based compensation for their top executives. "Performance-based compensation has emerged as the major trend," he added. Executive search firm EMA Partners International Ltd Managing Partner (Asia Emerging Markets) K Sudarshan also said that the CEOs were too small a percentage of the population to make an impact on per capita income of the country.