Ebook: Basic income: a transformative policy for India

This book reports on three overlapping pilot schemes in Madhya Pradesh and Delhi, including a special project in tribal villages, in which over 6,000 people were provided with a modest basic income paid monthly over 18 months. The project was funded by UNICEF and UNDP and implemented by SEWA (The Indian Self-Employed Women’s Association). Written by Guy Standing, who designed the pilot schemes and Renana Jhabvala, the head of SEWA, who implemented them, the book examines the transformative effects of these pilot schemes at the individual, family and local economy levels.

India is mired in bureaucratic rigidities and hierarchical structures of exploitation and oppression, leading to a well-known problem the overly complex system of public welfare services. It is widely recognised that this system requires innovative intervention, via transparent policies that are able to avoid political capture.

The pilots are discussed in the context of the new Food Security Act, the government’s job guarantee plan, MGNREGA, and ongoing debate over the efficacy of the Public Distribution System and its ration shops disbursing rice, wheat, sugar and kerosene. The authors look at a number of alternative options for addressing rural poverty, including subsidies, targeting, selectivity and conditionality, contrasting them with the basic income model. They argue that the provision of basic incomes not only provides economic security but has many knock-on effects, allowing families to escape the debt trap, enrich food consumption and unlock constraints to schooling and healthcare. Above all it may enable individuals, including women, the disabled, the elderly and those in excluded castes or tribes, to engage more effectively in wider society.