(LiveMint)
Finance minister Arun Jaitley on Sunday said the idea of Universal Basic Income proposed in the Economic Survey 2016-17 may not be politically feasible in today’s India.
Inaugurating a one-week teachers’ workshop on Indian economy at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, Jaitley said this year, the survey sparked an important debate on subsidies. “Should we put money into the bank accounts (of the poor) as we are intending to do at the moment, or should we substitute the entire set of subsidies and instead to a defined section below a certain poverty line, we give them a universal basic income. And that Universal Basic Income expedites their pulling out of the present state of poverty that they live in,” Jaitley explained.
Jaitley said while he is fully supportive of the idea of Universal Basic Income, realizing the limitations of Indian politics, it may not be politically feasible. “I have always expressed to him (chief economic adviser in the finance ministry Arvind Subramanian) the fear that once he moots ideas like the Universal Basic Income, we will be landing in a situation where people will stand up in Parliament and demand continuation of the present subsidies and over and above that, let’s have the Universal Basic Income, something that the budget will not be able to afford,” he said.
