-VillageSquare.in Income support to smallholder farmers is similar to palliative measures like minimum support prices or loan waivers that do not address the problem of an unsustainable population living on a fixed resource base The government in the budget for this year has announced an allocation of Rs 75,000 crore for direct income transfer of Rs 6,000 annually for every farmer who owns less than 2 hectares of land. This amount...
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How to make Direct Benefit Transfers work for the people -Karthik Muralidharan, Paul Niehaus and Sandip Sukhtankar
-IDRonline.org Replacing India's Public Distribution System with Direct Benefit Transfers will improve efficiency, but shouldn't be implemented at the cost of individual choice. The Public Distribution System (PDS) is India’s flagship food security programme but also suffers from well-known inefficiencies. Even official government estimates suggest that a large share of public spending on the PDS does not reach intended beneficiaries. Thus, the idea of Direct Benefits Transfer (DBT) in lieu of subsidised...
More »Jean Dreze, the Belgian-Indian economist, interviewed by Ujjawal Krishnam (National Herald)
-National Herald Well-known Belgian-Indian economist Jean Drèze, reflects on the times we live in this animated conversation with Ujjawal Krishnam Jean Drèze, the Belgian-Indian economist, true to his reputation, laces humour and an acerbic wit to reflect on the times we live in. Self deprecating, he brushes aside the question how he juggles between his roles as economist, activist and teacher. He wonders at the multi-tasking ability of Indian women instead. Nor...
More »Universal Basic Income can be funded by reducing subsidies to the rich -Pranab Bardhan
-The Indian Express I think packaging a significant UBIS with a simultaneous increase in the taxes on the rich will help macro-economic stability, apart from assuaging the poor who will face some of the price rise in commodities or services, when subsidies are withdrawn. After my last op-ed in this paper (The safety net of the future) several readers, intrigued by the idea of a Universal Basic Income Supplement (UBIS) proposed...
More »MSP was not 1.5 times the cost of production for most kharif crops during the last 6 agricultural years
In its 2014 election manifesto, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), among other things, promised to "take steps to enhance the profitability in agriculture, by ensuring a minimum of 50% profits over the cost of production". In his 2018-19 Union budget speech too, the Finance Minister Shri Arun Jaitley informed the Parliament that the 2014 election manifesto of the BJP had stated that the farmers should get at least 1.5 times the...
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