Rasmus Schjoedt, “India’s Basic Income Experiment”

Rasmus Schjoedt is the Social Policy Specialist at Development Pathways, a UK-based consultancy firm that “brings together a group of social policy experts with extensive international experience of working on social protection, social development, gender, financial inclusion, and livelihoods.”

Development Pathways states that its vision is the “global adoption of transformative social and economic policies that guarantee the realisation of the rights for all,” and its mission is to “provide creative evidence based and context specific solutions to social and economic policy challenges.”

Schjoedt wrote the April 25, 2016 edition of the Pathways’ Perspective blog on the topic of basic income experiment conducted in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh from 2011 to 2012.

Despite a short implementation period and relatively low benefit levels, the effects were impressive: by the end of the project it was possible to see significant improvements in living conditions, nutrition and education.

With almost half of the world’s poorest living in India, how the country approaches social protection in the coming years will be very important for the global efforts to eliminate extreme poverty by 2030. A universal basic income could be an important part of the solution.

Schjoedt describes the experiment and its results in some detail in a paper available for download here.

Reference

Rasmus Schjoedt, “India’s Basic Income Experiment,” Pathways’ Perspectives, April 25, 2016.

Image Source: Yann via Wikimedia Commons