Economy
Why Is No One Talking About The Obvious Problems With Universal Basic Income?
- It’s surprising how quickly the idea of a universal basic income has gained traction in India.
- The idea is bad and extremely dangerous for India.
A bank staff member hands Rs 500 notes to a customer. (INDRANIL MUKHERJEE/AFP/GettyImages)
I have come across two eminently sensible articles on the applicability, and the relevance, of ‘Universal Basic Income’ for India. One was by Professor Pulapre Balakrishnan (ht: Praveen Chakravarty), and the other by Rajesh Kumar of Mint. (Disclosure: He is Editor of the Edits page that carries my weekly columns.)
Prof Balakrishnan’s article is crisply written. Here is a sample:
Universal Basic Income (UBI) attempts to tackle only the first part of the quoted sentence, and that too for all Indians?! Why should it be given to people like us and to the ultra-rich? What for?! What about targeted subsidies and the use of technology to do that? Why suddenly talk of UBI for all Indians? It is madness.
His point on UBI is indisputable:
As for financial feasibility, many write glibly that it could be paid for, by pruning subsidies elsewhere. Neat for the op-ed writer. It absolves his or her conscience without doing anything to address its practicality. Like many things in life, once done, government interventions are hard to roll back. They are sticky. That is the point that Rajesh Kumar of Mint makes.
I reiterate: talking of financing it is only secondary. That should not be construed as an acknowledgement of the intrinsic soundness of the idea. It is bad and extremely dangerous for India. I am both alarmed and amazed at the speed with which the idea has gained traction in India. I would have thought that it merited less than a 60-second consideration before being rejected, in the Indian context.
Ideas also conform to the Peter principle of management competence that every employee, in a hierarchy, rises to his ultimate level of incompetence.
Its modified form is this: “For every problem, only bad ideas rise to the ultimate level of consideration.”
This piece was first published on this writer’s blog, The Gold Standard, and has been republished here with permission.
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