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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Muhammad Yunus. Picture credit to: Yunus negócios sociais (Brazil) Muhammad Yunus, the 2006 Peace Nobel Prize laureate and founder of the Grameen Bank, is very concerned about artificial intelligence (AI). His fear revolves around the prospects of generalized unemployment, as machines replace most of traditionally human tasks. Yunus also, like a few other economists, including Nobel Prize winners,
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Saksham Khosla, a research analyst at Carnegie India, has written a detailed report on the implementation of basic income in India. His research focuses on the political economy of administrative, economic and welfare reforms in India. Less than a year ago, India’s Finance Minister, Arun Jaitley, presented the Indian government’s Economic Survey, which featured a 40-page chapter on basic
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The India Network for Basic Income recently released two new YouTube videos aiming to highlight issues around universal basic income (UBI). The first, which lasts slightly over one minute, addresses the payment of UBI to women, and makes the argument that, as women frequently do unpaid work such as childcare or housekeeping, providing them with a regular income does not
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India’s Chief Economic Advisor, Arvind Subramanian, recently told reporters that he would “bet” that one or two Indian states would be implementing universal basic income (UBI) by 2020. The high-level government advisor’s comments occurred within the context of the release of the 2017-2018 Economic Survey of India. The Economic Survey is a regular report which examines the country’s current economic
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A short-term universal basic income (UBI) pilot in India has been found to have positive effects years after it concluded, according to a recent follow-up study. Researchers who returned to the villages involved in the original pilot study, which took place in 2012-2013, found that many of the improvements caused by a year of basic income had been wholly or
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