Universal income in a post-pandemic world

Context: The concept of Universal Basic income(UBI) is required more than ever during the pandemic. It has the potential of being implemented in developing countries too without much fiscal strain. 

Propitious time for UBI:

• Economic downturn: has pushed towards the need for such programmes to boost mass consumer demand.
• Austerity Policies: in the form of cuts in public services and reduced salaries also demands more relief action by the government.
• Structural inefficiencies: due to pandemic in the sense of social insecurities and lack of robust public health infrastructure.

UBI: Western Concept and Experiments

• Long history: the idea of guaranteed public assistance programmes proposed 500 years back by Thomas More, supported by a wide political spectrum.
• Source of funding: based on some natural resources (oil for Iran and Alaska and Copper for Mongolia).
• Expensive Idea: Many economists in the developed countries believe that it is too costly for the government to fund UBI at a decent level.
• Technology Disruption: has caused work-displacement visible with the rise of automation and artificial intelligence. This has roped in the private sector in support of the idea.

Need of UBI

• Anti-poverty programmes: suffer from administrative lapses and malfeasance.

• Exclusion error: About half the poor people don’t have BPL card.
• Inclusion error: About one-third of the non-poor have the card.
• UBI minimizes the exclusion errors so that hardly any poor people are left out.

• Poverty is not a static demographic category: same people, transit in and out of poverty and is difficult to track.

• Ensuring basic human rights: UBI helps in protecting the basic human right of economic security. Right to Social Security was a part of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948.