{"id":186738,"date":"2022-05-27T20:48:04","date_gmt":"2022-05-27T15:18:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=186738"},"modified":"2022-05-27T20:48:04","modified_gmt":"2022-05-27T15:18:04","slug":"universal-basic-income-plan-faces-implementation-issues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/universal-basic-income-plan-faces-implementation-issues\/","title":{"rendered":"Universal basic income plan faces implementation issues"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

News<\/strong>: Practical challenges in implementation have come in the way of rolling out a universal basic income scheme proposed by experts and mooted in the 2016-17 Economic Survey, an official privy to the government discussions said.<\/p>\n

Background<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Universal basic income has often come before on the radar of policymakers as a means of support for the bottom of the pyramid, but designing the scheme has proven to be a big challenge.<\/p>\n

The latest recommendation for such a scheme came earlier this month in a report<\/strong> commissioned by the economic advisory council to the PM on income inequality<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The idea of universal basic income, or a single unconditional income that reduces government efforts to ensure last-mile delivery of individual social security schemes, first featured in the Economic Survey 2016-17<\/strong> prepared by the then Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Subramanian.<\/p>\n

–<\/strong> The suggestion then was that the scheme will provide every citizen unconditional cash transfer<\/strong> in place of the many benefits, like health facilities, fertilizer, fuel, food subsidies etc. The case for a single unconditional income is that it reduces government efforts to make sure individual schemes reach the right targets.<\/p>\n

But over the years, the idea has turned from being a universal scheme to a targeted scheme<\/strong> that brings with it implementation challenges and problems in identifying the right beneficiaries.<\/p>\n

What are the challenges that have cropped up?<\/h5>\n

For rolling out universal basic income, an institutional mechanism<\/strong> has to be in place.<\/p>\n

Which institution can do it, who are the eligible beneficiaries and how to track and verify the delivery of benefits on a large scale<\/strong>\u2014these are questions that need to be looked into before taking a decision on UBI.<\/p>\n

Also, the problem in the scheme comes when cut-offs are set and benefits<\/strong> are targeted at certain groups, i.e. instead of being a universal scheme, a targeted scheme is aimed at.<\/p>\n

Fiscal issues<\/strong> also surface when, rather than having a fixed budget for the scheme covering all citizens, cut-offs for various segments have to be worked out.<\/p>\n

A targeted scheme cannot be called universal and this will also require another round of Socio Economic and Caste Census (SECC)<\/strong> to get updated data on beneficiaries as the 2012 data is now outdated and does not provide the correct picture.<\/p>\n

Why a universal scheme would be unsustainable?<\/h5>\n

In its original form of being a universal scheme, applicable for all Indian citizens, the scheme is expected to become unsustainably large, stretching the country\u2019s finances to a breaking point.<\/p>\n

–<\/strong> Even going by the decade-old urban poverty line of \u20b9<\/span>1,000 per person per month, providing UBI to about 1.3 billion citizens would cost the government \u20b9<\/span>15.6 trillion a year.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Source<\/strong>: This post is based on the article \u201cUniversal basic income plan faces implementation issues<\/strong>\u201d published in Livemint<\/strong> on 27th May 22<\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

News: Practical challenges in implementation have come in the way of rolling out a universal basic income scheme proposed by experts and mooted in the 2016-17 Economic Survey, an official privy to the government discussions said. Background Universal basic income has often come before on the radar of policymakers as a means of support for… Continue reading Universal basic income plan faces implementation issues<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10328,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1230,9],"tags":[216,10501],"class_list":["post-186738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-9-pm-daily-articles","category-public","tag-gs-paper-3","tag-live-mint","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10328"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186738\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}