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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Nobel winner Abhijit Banerjee calls for bigger government cash payments to Covid-hit poor -Paran Balakrishnan

Nobel winner Abhijit Banerjee calls for bigger government cash payments to Covid-hit poor -Paran Balakrishnan

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published Published on Jun 11, 2021   modified Modified on Jun 14, 2021

-The Telegraph

Poverty research pioneer cites US, UK and EU experience; Niti Aayog vice-chairman disagrees, says there’s no guarantee ‘helicopter money’ will lead to spending

Nobel laureate Abhijit Banerjee has stepped up to the firing line by arguing the government should make bigger direct cash payments under the MGNREGA scheme to help people who have slid into poverty due to the pandemic.

The government has already indicated it’s not keen on larger direct cash transfers, saying people would only park the money in bank accounts and not spend it. “I contest the view of those who say at this time that we require at this time a direct cash transfer. All that income transfer would result only in higher bank deposits and not in higher consumption spending, and that is what we don’t need,” Niti Aayog Vice-Chairman Rajiv Kumar stated earlier this week.

Banerjee, a pioneer in research in reducing poverty, pitched strongly for hiking workdays under MGNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme) to 150 days from 100 days. The MIT professor says: “The people who have gone below the poverty line were actually the people who were just above the poverty line before (the pandemic).” He added firmly in an interview to NDTV late Thursday: “It won’t take much for them to go back to normal.”

He added: “If the sectors – hotels, manufacturing, construction – where unskilled labourers are employed are revived quickly, then the situation may improve.”

Kumar, who represents the government’s line of thinking, contradicts this. “Where is the guarantee that ‘helicopter money,’ if dropped, would result in higher consumption and will lead to a virtuous cycle of higher consumption, higher investment, higher growth? I don’t belong to that school of thought,” he told Moneycontrol.

Instead, Kumar argues the government needs to focus its efforts and cash on the vaccination programme and until that’s done it will be futile to hand out cash directly to individuals. As long as “consumers have a fear of moving out and interacting, whatever you do, will not result in higher consumption, higher aggregate demand and higher economic activity,” he says.

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The Telegraph, 11 June, 2021, https://www.telegraphindia.com/india/nobel-winner-abhijit-banerjee-calls-for-bigger-government-cash-payments-to-covid-hit-poor/cid/1818488?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=tt_daily_twit


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