by Josh Martin | Mar 3, 2016 | News
The Goa Foundation, an environmental NGO in India has developed a list of reforms for the mining industry, among which is to implement a citizen’s dividend which will act as a universal basic income for all. Their chief argument rests on the fact that minerals are non-renewable inherited assets owned by the state and that a citizen’s dividend will act as a new non-wasting asset of at least equal value to the minerals that may be sold.
The Goa Foundation looks toward the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend as a model to be followed in setting up the Future Generations Fund.
They want to invest the equivalent amount of money of mineral sales into a Future Generations Fund, from which “all the real income from the fund is distributed equally to all citizens in the form of the citizen’s dividend.”
“We want this implemented across India and globally. It is fair, our right and our duty to our children.” said Rahul Basu, member of Goa Foundation.
To read more, click on the following link:
Rahul Basu, “A Citizen’s Dividend from Mining”, Basic Income India, 11 February 2016.
by Josh Martin | Jul 16, 2015 | News
Sarath Davala, an independent sociologist based in Hyderabad, has begun a new blog focused on basic income in India. Davala worked closely on the Indian Basic Income Pilot projects with Renana Jhabvala, Soumya Kapoor Mehta, and Guy Standing, authoring Basic Income: A Transformative Policy for India.
On the blog’s website, the reader can find blog posts tailored to basic income in India, information on their book, and the final report for the Indian Basic Income Pilot Study.
To visit the blog, Basic Income India, click here.
by Citizens' Income Trust | Jul 10, 2015 | Opinion
Sarath Davala, Renana Jhabvala, Soumya Kapoor Mehta and Guy Standing, Basic Income: A transformative policy for India, Bloomsbury, 2015, xii + 234 pp, 1 4725 8310 9, hbk, xvi + 331 pp, £65, 1 4725 8311 6, pbk, xvi + 331 pp, £19.99
How can poverty be ended in the world’s developing nations? A simple question: and it might have a simple answer. A recent pilot project in India shows that a Citizen’s Income – an unconditional income for every individual – can make a substantial dent in poverty and create the conditions for its elimination.
This book is the report of eighteen-month experiments in which thousands of men, women and children in urban, rural and tribal communities in India were given a monthly unconditional income in place of India’s flawed subsidised food and guaranteed employment schemes. Pilot communities in which cash transfers would replace the subsidy system, and control communities in which they would not, were randomly selected, and the different outcomes in relation to a number of factors were carefully evaluated during the project and at the end.
The first chapter describes how the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) and UNICEF (the United Nations Children’s Fund) worked with Guy Standing and his colleagues to decide that the pilot project would be of a genuine Citizen’s Income – a universal, unconditional and nonwithdrawable cash transfer – for every individual in the pilot communities. Arguments against such cash transfers are answered. The second chapter describes the project, and the vast amount of work that went into establishing the necessary infrastructure, and particularly into ensuring that everyone in the pilot communities had bank accounts into which their Citizen’s Incomes could be paid.
The rest of the book describes the effects of the Citizen’s Income in terms of improved housing, electricity and water supplies, sanitation, nutrition, health, healthcare, school attendance and performance (especially for girls of secondary school age), and economic activity: by the end of the project, ‘many more households in the basic income villages had increased their earned incomes than was the case in the control villages, and many fewer had experienced a fall in earned income than in the control villages’ (p.139). In the pilot villages, child and teenage labour shifted from wage labour to own account work on family farms and to increased school attendance, bonded labour decreased as debts were paid off, and the purchase of such assets as sewing machines facilitated increased own account economic activity. Women’s status was enhanced by their new financial independence and by SEWA’s involvement, and the elderly and the disabled experienced improved status and living conditions. The final chapter shows that India could afford to pay a small universal Citizen’s Income by reallocating the money currently spent on food subsidy schemes.
SEWA, UNICEF and the researchers are to be congratulated on the establishment, and the significant success, of this pilot project. They have proved that it is possible to implement a Citizen’s Income in a developing country and that the benefits of doing so are substantial. The results are encouragingly similar to those generated by a Namibian pilot project in which Guy Standing was also involved. A significant cumulative case has now been built. Now all that is required is the political will to establish a Citizen’s Income scheme. If that happens then it might be a developing country, rather than a developed one, that implements the first universal Citizen’s Income and reaps the social and economic benefits.
by Andre Coelho | Mar 11, 2015 | News
Credi to: OpenIndia
The author argues that giving things to people is not as valuable as giving them money
. This he learned from a new book, called Basic Income. A chance to exercise freedom in choosing what and when to buy, instead of being micro-managed by far away bureaucrats handing out food stamps or housing vouchers.
Tim Worstall, “India’s Basic Income, Or, Let’s Abolish Food Stamps And Make Everyone Richer“, Forbes, January 28 2015
