-The Hindu The growing chorus for a Universal Basic Income is a ruse to eliminate or roll back significantly the public distribution system and signature welfare programmes The idea of a Universal Basic Income (UBI) has been gaining ground globally. While Switzerland held a referendum on it last year (it was voted down), Finland introduced it earlier this month. Media reports suggest that the government of India’s flagship Economic Survey this year...

-Firstpost.com I fear this budget. I fear that Finance Minister Arun Jaitley might announce an idea that I have liked and advocated: The idea of a Universal Basic Income. I fear it because Jaitley may use this label to justify something quite the opposite. In the process, he might ruin a good idea. Straws in the wind indicate that he might try something to this effect. Demonetisation was part of a grand...

-The Hindu The idea of a basic income is not new. The first known suggestion on an unconditional Universal Basic Income for all adults regardless of other income sources was from Thomas More. Centuries later, in 1918, Bertrand Russell discussed a basic income sufficient for necessities as central to the social model combining the advantages of anarchism and socialism that he argued for in Proposed Roads to Freedom. “A certain small...

-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...

-Business Standard This policy involves providing products and services such as electricity and fertilisers at below-market prices New Delhi: While much of public discourse in India has tended to focus on expanding the current subsidy regime to help the poor, Vijay Joshi, economist at Oxford University, advocates shifting to a Universal Basic Income, replacing all government subsidies with a single cash transfer to all citizens, providing them with a basic income guarantee. At...