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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Universal Basic Income For India Suddenly Trendy. Look Out -Jean Dreze

Universal Basic Income For India Suddenly Trendy. Look Out -Jean Dreze

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published Published on Jan 16, 2017   modified Modified on Jan 16, 2017
-NDTV

A recent headline in Quartz, an otherwise serious media agency, claims that Jammu and Kashmir is the first state in India to "commit to a universal basic income" (UBI). A glance at the original source quickly negates this claim: it is based on nothing more than "seeds of a thought" (sic) from the Finance Minister of J&K about possible cash transfers for a small minority of poor households. This is not a commitment, and it is not UBI anyway.

There have been other cases of active promotion of UBI in the business media in recent weeks. For example, a guarded statement by Professor Guy Standing, welcoming news that UBI might be discussed in the forthcoming Economic Survey, was widely relayed as an insider's revelation that UBI was about to be launched in India. Similarly, reference is often made to Finland as "the first country with UBI," yet Finland has gone no further than a tiny pilot scheme of unconditional cash transfers for 2000-odd recipients. Clearly, UBI has become a subject of half-truths, if not post-truths.

But let's leave propaganda aside for now, and look at UBI proposals on their own merits. Two influential proposals have been made recently. Pranab Bardhan, citing National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP) estimates of "non-merit subsidies" to the tune of 9 per cent of GDP, argues for the bulk of this to be spent on UBI instead. With a little top-up from reduced tax exemptions, he proposes a basic income of Rs. 10,000 per person per year at a cost of 10 per cent of GDP. On a more modest note, Vijay Joshi proposes spending 3.5 per cent of GDP on a UBI scheme where everyone from aam admi to Ambani gets a cash transfer equivalent to one fifth of the poverty line. Even 3.5 per cent of GDP is ambitious: about three times as much as public expenditure on health care, and more than ten times the cost of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA).

I have liked the idea of UBI for a long time. In countries (like Finland) that can afford a generous UBI and also have first-rate public services, it has two attractive features. First, UBI is a fool-proof way of safeguarding the right to dignified living. Second, it gives people the option to live without working (or rather, without doing paid work) if they are willing to settle for a simple life. And why not?

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NDTV, 16 January, 2017, http://www.ndtv.com/opinion/decoding-universal-basic-income-for-india-1649293?pfrom=home-lateststories


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