Highlights:

Though economy is doing well, human development as a whole is not up to the expected levels in the country. Here, the country continues to be compared with countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Need of the hour: India’s economic growth must trickle down much faster to people at the bottom of the pyramid: to poorer farmers, landless rural labour, and hundreds of millions of workers living on the edge in low-paying, ‘flexible’ forms of employment with no social security.

Solution: Economists seem to be offering three solutions to the economy’s structural problems. One, that there is no problem. Two, more privatisation. And, three, a universal basic income (UBI) to be provided by the state.

UBI:

1. UBI has appeared as a silver bullet solution to all the problems that the country is facing on the economy side. It will be an income provided to everybody by the very state that the capitalists say should get out of their way, and to whom they are unwilling to pay more taxes.
2. The beauty of a ‘universal’ basic income, its proponents say, is that it avoids messy political questions about who deserves assistance. It also side-steps the challenge of actually providing the services required: education, health, food, etc. Just give the people cash: let them buy what they need.
3. However, if the cash will not provide citizens with good quality and affordable education and health, because neither the government nor the private sector is able or willing to, this will not solve the basic human development problems that must be solved.

What about QUBRI (quasi-universal basic rural income)?

To make UBI financially and politically feasible, few economists have suggested a QUBRI (quasi-universal basic rural income), targeted only at poorer people in the rural areas. Their scheme is no longer universal.

1. First, it will exclude the not-so-poor in rural areas as morally it should. Political questions about who should be included will have to be addressed.
2. Second, it will not cover the masses of urban poor working for low and uncertain wages.

Therefore, a simplistic UBI will not solve the fundamental problems of the economy.

Universal basic capital:

A better solution to structural inequality than UBI is universal basic capital, or UBC, which has begun to pop up in international policy circles.

• In this alternative approach, people own the wealth they generate as shareholders of their collective enterprises. Amul, SEWA, Grameen, and others have shown a way.
• Some economists go further and also propose a ‘dividend’ for all citizens, by providing them a share of initial public offerings on the stock market, especially from companies that use ‘public assets’, such as publicly funded research, or environmental resources.

Overall measures concluded:

One, focus on building state capacity beginning with implementation of the recommendations of the Second Administrative Reforms Commission. Two, strengthen the missing middle-level institutions for aggregation of tiny enterprises and representation of workers. Three, the creativity of economists could be better applied to developing ideas for UBC than UBI.