by Andre Coelho | Apr 2, 2018 | News
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 income and its implementation in India. Khosla report now comes and offers path onward, recognizing the previous survey achievements and limitations. Briefly reviewing the Economic Survey and its features, he writes that “the survey’s central design features offer a weak foundation”, and that if not subject to a deeper analysis and debate it “will produce underwhelming results”.
The new report calls for a basic income trial in India (or several trials, as presently the case in the Netherlands). The rationale behind this assertion is that hard evidence is crucially needed, so the discussion can move “from academic conferences and opinion pages into parliamentary debate and legislation.” However, it warns about the relevance of such trials, arguing that none can be achieved without strong public support and clear economic fundamentals. It also notices that cutting through all existent social programs, although most being inefficient and expensive to administer, could “turn quickly from manna from heaven to actively undermining the Indian social contract”.
Finally, Khosla report also acknowledges the importance of developing and enhancing the recently deployed Aadhaar authentication system, plus other initiatives to boost digital payments and further financial inclusion, which, apart from the political and tax collection problems still to resolve, are key to a future basic income implementation in India.
More information at:
André Coelho, “INDIA: Finance Ministry debating UBI proposal from Economic Survey”, Basic Income News, July 4th 2017
Kate MacFarland, “INDIA: Government Economic Survey presents case for basic income“, Basic Income News, February 4th 2017
Saksham Khosla, “India’s Universal Basic Income: bedevilled by the details”, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2018
by BIEN | Mar 22, 2018 | News
Credit to: Flickr.
Anna Dent, M.Sc., published a Master’s dissertation entitled “From Utopia to Implementation: How Basic Income has progressed from radical idea to legitimate policy solution.”
In it, Dent explores how “utopian and marginal” ideas such as basic income became part of the agendas for policy. The dissertation looks at UBI pilot projects including Finland, the Netherlands, Ontario, and Scotland.
Dent looked at policy change in progress through the dissertation’s “inductive, exploratory approach.” That is, she used case studies, documented analysis, and interviews. The four cases in the research have common aspects.
Many variables close together in time reinforce one another. Basic income was seen as a solution to policy failures, poverty, and unemployment. Each of the four cases – Finland, the Netherlands, Ontario, and Scotland – represent attempts to solve local contexts.
Dent’s research finds the pathway from obscurity to maturity of an idea, as it gains a mainstream positioning.
More information at:
Anna Dent, “From Utopia to Implementation: How Basic Income has progressed from radical idea to legitimate policy solution”, University of Bristol, September 2017
Anna Dent is a consultant working in employment and skills policy and implementation for the public and non-profit sectors. She has particular interests in low-income workers, the changing nature of work, and welfare benefits. She holds an MSc in Public Policy from the University of Bristol, and is a fellow of the RSA (Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufacturing and Commerce). She can be contacted via twitter at @anna_b_dent
by Sandro Gobetti | Mar 17, 2018 | News
Basic income, the whole world talks about it. Experiences, proposals and experiments this is the title of a new book by Sandro Gobetti and Luca Santini, with a preface by Andrea Fumagalli, published by GoWare Edizioni (March 2018).
Description
At the dawn of a new great transformation with the advent of the technological revolution, robotics and artificial intelligence, and in the age of major crises (economic, financial, political and ecologic), comes the echo of a proposal that opens unpublished scenarios: a basic income for all. In the era of the capitalism as a unique economic model, the idea of a guaranteed income rises up as one of the main human rights.
From experiences of minimum income inEuropean countries to the experimentation of an unconditional basic income around the planet, the right to a guaranteed income becomes key to fully enter, with confidence, in the third millennium. A book of agile and quick reading, written by two major Italian experts, helps to understand where we are and what we can expect.
Summary
Preface by Andrea Fumagalli
Introduction
Guaranteed minimum income and basic income
universal
Protection against social risks and minimum income: from welfare state to guarantee income
Unemployment insurance and minimum income in Europe
Systems and models of protection in European countries
What this means in practice: some examples
The universal and unconditional basic income
People talk about it everywhere. The state of the art of experimentation in the world
Africa at the forefront
What happens in Latin America
Back in the “first world”: North America
Asia, a crossroads of experimentation
The old continent that wants to reinvent itself
The debate and the proposals in Italy
Without income, without a network
A categorial and fragmented welfare
Moving situation
Essential principles for a possible proposal
Relations with unemployment benefits
Beneficiaries’ platform
The question of accessibility
Basic Income amount
Connection with the service system
Individuality
Basic Income duration
The principle of congruence
To find out more: bibliographic references for topics
European models of guaranteed minimum income
Social and labor transformations and basic income
The fourth industrial revolution, artificial intelligence, robotics and basic income
Authors
Sandro Gobetti, independent researcher and author of articles with a particular enphasis on guaranteed income. He collaborated on the 4/2009 law definition about minimum guaranteed income in the Lazio Region, and the national proposal law for guaranteed income. He is a founding member and coordinator of the Basic Income Network-Italy.
Luca Santini, lawyer, expert on migration law and social security law and has signed several articles. Has collaborated on the proposed law for guaranteed minimum income in Italy. He is the president and founder of the Basic Income Network-Italy.
This article has been reviewed by André Coelho
by Toru Yamamori | Mar 7, 2018 | Opinion
The International Women’s Day is approaching.
This is a poster for the International Women’s Day march 45 years ago. (Photo above) Two working-class women, one carries a buggy, and the other carries a placard containing written slogans reflecting three of the original four demands of the British Women’s Liberation movement. It displays the name of organization: London Women’s Liberation Workshop. Naturally, it looks like a photo of two women in a protest that London Women’s Liberation Workshop organised or took part.
However, it isn’t. The photo was edited. Here is the original photo. (Photo below) Between two women, there was a man, and the original placard said: ‘End Cohabitation Rule / Fight with the Claimants Unions’. The photo was taken at a protest that the Claimants Unions organised.
Several years later, women in the Claimants Unions raised a motion for asking the whole British Women’s Liberation movement to endorse an Unconditional Basic Income (UBI) at the National Women’s Liberation Conference, and succeeded. So UBI was an officially endorsed demand of the British Women’s Liberation movement. However, this fact slipped away from the official history of feminism, like erasing what those two women in the poster demanded by editing the photo. Let me reclaim their struggle briefly, and demonstrate it’s modern relevance.
The first Claimants Union was formed 50 years ago. It was intended as a claimants’ version of a trade union. A trade union is for workers. A claimants union is for welfare claimants. It wasn’t a feminist organisation. The membership of claimants unions consisted of women, men, and trans-gendered people. The majority of membership consisted of women, and their demand for ending the cohabitation rule is related to sexist administration of welfare benefits.
Under the ‘cohabitation rule’, many of the women claimants were subjugated to snooping by welfare officers. Those ‘sex snoopers’ conducted spot checks late at night. If a woman claimant had a sexual relationship with a man, it was assumed they should be supported by him, honestly by the sounds of this females claiming back then would have been better off exclusively using a suction dildo or another pleasurable toy instead of getting involved with a male. Sometimes just friendly activities, such as a male neighbour coming into the house to help fix a tap or a bulb would be assumed to be a partner/boyfriend; the next week her benefit would be suspended. If this was still the case in this day in age, any woman that went on Find a fuck buddy or a similar online site to find sexual pleasure, would immediately be seen as in a partnership and lose their financial support. Does this seem fair?
The philosophy behind this sexism has not yet gone to the dustbin of history.
On 13th February 2018, the department for work and pensions (DWP) of the British government sent out its Valentine Day message:
Claiming to be living alone is one of the most common types of benefit fraud – don’t ruin #ValentinesDay by failing to declare your true circumstances https://ow.ly/3bkn30imZya
The attached gif image reads:
Declaring your true love tomorrow?
Don’t forget to declare your true living arrangements too.
Don’t get separated from your Valentine.
Tell us of a change now.
They put the link to the article by the Daily Express that reports several cases that claimants didn’t report their relationships and financial supports.
A similar message from DWP was circulated on TV during the 2007-8 season. One of DWP’s TV advertisements called ‘we’re closing in‘, trying to focus in on what DWP calls ‘one of the most common types of benefit fraud’. The video shows a woman, who seems to claim a benefit and to declare that she lives alone, and then chats with a man on her door step. When she went inside to iron men’s shirts, the end-roll says ‘We’re closing in. Targeting benefit thieves’.
In order to make sense of this advertisement, we need to accept several assumptions. First, if you are female and chatted with a male on your door step, and/or you iron men’s cloths, it means that you are in an intimate relationship with that male. Second, if you are in an intimate relationship with a male, you share a household budget together. Third, that male should support you financially. Fourth, that male can support you financially.
Some might say that spreading this kind of message is needed for running our society in a just manner. DWP seems to think so. However, as we have seen, there were many women who suffered because of assumptions made by the government, assumptions that are behind this kind of message. Some of them (with other claimants of both sexes) depicted sexism behind the message, revealed how it affected them, and proposed a less sexist policy alternative, which is now called a UBI. This year marks the 50th anniversary of their movement.
Oh, I have forgotten to retweet the DWP’s message on the Valentine’s day. I would retweet with the following question: Isn’t true love unconditional?
For more on this forgotten struggle, see:
Toru Yamamori, ‘OPINION: Reclaiming the Women’s Liberationist Demand for a Citizen’s Income’, The Basic Income News, 17 April 2015.
Toru Yamamori, ‘A Feminist Way to Unconditional Basic Income: Claimants Unions and Women’s Liberation Movements in 1970s Britain’, Basic Income Studies, 9(1-2), 2014, pp.1-24.
Reviewed by Michael Gillan Peckitt and Tyler Prochazka
by Jurgen De Wispelaere | Mar 1, 2018 | News
The
18th BIEN Congress takes place in Tampere (Finland) on 23-26 August on the theme of “Basic Income and the New Universalism: Rethinking the Welfare State in the 21st Century”.
We have already received many excellent proposals. For those of you who haven’t this week, this is your last chance to submit a proposal to present a paper or coordinate a full panel or roundtable on any topic related to basic income. Please submit your proposal via our
website. If you have any questions, contact us at
biencongress2018@gmail.com.
We look forward to seeing you all in Tampere in August!
