Prem Das Rai (Wikipedia) The Morung Express newspaper has interviewed the sole Sikkim MP at Lok Sabha (central parliament in India), Prem Das Rai. On the 17th of February, excerpts of that interview were posted, where Rai clearly states that introducing a universal basic income (UBI) in the state “is a leap of faith”. To him, it is a
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Thomas Piketty. Picture credit to: Books Live (Sunday Times) Details are being fed into Rahul Gandhi’s promise of a minimum income guarantee to poor Indians, an announcement made earlier this month. Thomas Piketty, an authority in economics, and particularly in inequality analysis, is assisting Ghandi’s Congress party in designing the policy onto the Indian context. Although Piketty has a particular vision
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Masked Narodi supporters, in 2014. Picture credit to: Aljazeera Just a few days after Rahul Gandhi, leader of the Congress Party, announced the intention of implementing a “nationwide minimum income for the poor”, Prime Minister Narenda Modi’s government now proposes a “basic income for poor farmers”. This policy was set as a part of a supposedly interim budget, only up
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Rahul Gandhi. Picture credit to: The Wire The main opposition party in India, the Congress party, has just promised to implement a “nationwide minimum income for the poor”, rolling out the unprecedent scheme starting as soon as May 2019, if it gets elected. The party’s president Rahul Gandhi, has announced this on Monday, while speaking to farmers in Chhattisgarh state,
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Indian farmer pouring fertilizer. Picture credit to: The National As indicated before, there is political movement in India in the direction of basic income. Particularly in the state of Telangana, which started the implementation of its Rythu Bandhu (Farmer Investment Support) program in May 2018. Other Indian states, namely Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Odisha, and Chattisgarh, have also introduced
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Road in rural India. Picture credit to: India TV. Farmers in India are under considerable stress. Uncertainty regarding weather, yield, prices and revenue, create the perfect conditions for distress and fragility over the exposure to shark lenders. That also means that massive hunger is a risk just around the corner, and in a year of elections in India, its rural
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Flowers, on the way to the mountain. Picture credit to: Rookie’s Journal Sikkim, the second smallest state in India, has grown a reputation, over the years, for environmental consciousness, ethnical diversity and tourism. It is also the home of one of the most educated people on Earth, with a 98% literacy rate. Moreover, in the last couple of decades, policies
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Indian woman worker with spectacles. Picture credit to: Sarah Day New ideas seem to be running dry in the Indian political context. Within Congress, Government (BJP – Bharatiya Janata Party) and opposition parties (ex.: AAP – Aam Aadmi Party). Tweaking with the minimum support prices for food production and/or with the multiplicity of welfare programs is not going to
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In the last two weeks, there has been much speculation in some sections of media about Prime Minister Narendra Modi seriously considering basic income as a policy option..
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The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has published a report suggesting that basic income would be better than their welfare system at supporting low income households in India. Similar evidence has been found for both Indonesia and Peru, where basic income was found to be beneficial compared to current welfare systems. The report uses 2011-12 National Sample Survey data to analyse the
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