Translator: Michele Gianella Reviewer: Ellen Maloney
What would you do,
if you didn't have to worry about your income?
If I gave everybody here, say, 10,000 rupees,
and not just everybody here,
but your parents, your friends, your neighborhood auntie,
what would happen then?
Would you go to your favorite bar and drink it all up?
Would you stash it in a deposit?
Or would you take the time off from work
and do something you've really been wanting to?
The reason I ask this question today
is because we will discuss an idea that has been thrown around quite a bit,
and maybe some of you have read about it in the newspapers, recently.
It's called Universal Basic Income.
Now, what is this Universal Basic Income, or UBI?
It is a monthly or regular transfer -
so it could be weekly or fortnightly as well -
it is a transfer of income
into the bank accounts of every individual,
so think, all citizens,
and it is without conditions.
It doesn't matter what income you earn: it could be 5,000, it could be 50,000.
It doesn't matter if you don't send your children to school,
if you do whatever: everyone gets it.
Now, this idea isn't new: it's been discussed for a long time.
It was first popped up in the 18th century.
Thomas Paine, a political thinker,
said that,
"People who don't own land should be given money by the State,
to make up for the inheritance that they lost as a matter of birth."
John Stuart Mill said that,
"Everybody should have enough money for substinence
irrespective of whether they can work or not work."
So the idea behind basic income is that poverty is not a natural calamity
like an earthquake that just happens.
It is a result of inequality and of unfair laws like property rights.
Income actually is a public inheritance that everyone should be entitled to.
What basic income does
is that it gives people, like the working class,
a bargaining power to negotiate their terms.
It recognizes things like unpaid labor
that women do as caregivers in the household,
which is hard work,
but is not recognized as economically productive,
and therefore is not remunerated.
I'm sure you recognize this
as some of your mothers and grandmothers work at home.
It is hard labor, but it's not recognized.
The other thing we found out over the years,
with small research studies and pilots
is that basic income
has far-reaching impact on the lives of people.
I know a lot of you would scoff at the idea
of giving free money to poor people particularly,
and say they'll probably drink it up, or spend it on excesses like cigarettes:
but it doesn't really happen.
I speak from experience.
I worked on the only basic income pilot in India
- coincidentally in Madhya Pradesh, in Indore District -
a few years ago in 2011-12.
We found that the results of basic income were fascinating.
We saw that nutrition levels of families, and particularly children, went up,
because money was being spent
on fruits, on vegetables, on milk products.
People were concentrating better in class, little children,
because their stomachs were full so they could concentrate better,
and their education outcomes were improved.
We saw little things
like people putting in their resources together
and making community or shared assets like toilets.
One of my favorite stories
is from a teacher who was teaching in the school
in one of the villages where we were making the transfer,
and he said,
"These days the children's faces are washed. They look clean."
It was realized that people were buying a little bit of extra soap.
The other thing we saw which gladdened my heart
was that the transfers happened in the month of June, the first ones,
and July is when the school opens for the first time in the New Year.
The government gives uniforms, but it doesn't give shoes,
so people used their transfers
to buy shoes for their school-going children.
We found that a transfer of 200 rupees per person per month,
which doesn't sound like a lot of money,
was making big changes in the lives of the people.
Now, why are we discussing this right now?
Because suddenly, it's gathered a lot of momentum.
Switzerland just had a referendum
on whether they should have basic income or not.
Unfortunately, the supporters lost by quite a bit:
77 percent 'no,' 23 percent 'yes.'
Finland is going to do an experiment.
Canada already did one in the 1970s,
but it's going to do a bigger one in Ontario.
Interestingly for you all,
Y Combinator, an accelerator I'm sure you know very well,
is also investing a lot of money
to test the idea in a small part of California,
where they've picked up a 100 households
they're going to give them $2,000 a month for two years,
and see what's going to happen.
Pierre Omidyar, another person you guys know
has spent $400,000 on a pilot in Kenya
which is going to be a long pilot for about 12 years.
In India as well, at home,
in the economic survey which came out in the end of January,
there was a whole chapter dedicated to basic income.
Arvind Subramanian, the chief economic adviser,
has this conversation in the chapter with Mahatma Gandhi,
and is certain that the Mahatma
would definitely want basic income in India.
So of course, the Government of India is now hurriedly planning on how to do it.
What is the reason for this chapter, all of a sudden?
It is paranoia.
Suddenly people are very afraid
that automation is coming after all our jobs.
Robots are going to do things that you and I do right now.
Even Elon Musk is concerned, so it must be a problem.
He believes in basic income too.
In India, I've seen figures.
We lose 550 jobs a day to automation.
That doesn't sound like such a bizarre idea,
because you think about India,
and you see that there are still a lot of things that we do
that are actually automated in different countries.
When you think about technologies
like Amazon's drones dropping your deliveries,
or those fully automated stores that they have been planning,
that's a lot of jobs.
Those are our delivery boys, our cashiers, the people who man our stores.
That's lots and lots of jobs.
But then again, you want to think about,
why is the Silicon Valley interested in something like this?
What is their interest
in what seems to be free money, to people, for social welfare?
Now, the critique is that, and I tend to believe it,
is that is an excuse to make disruptive technologies.
To say, guiltlessly,
"We can make those driverless cars and take your jobs,
because you have this basic income."
The other thing we've heard
is that basic income should spark entrepreneurship,
it should not just be a source of security net.
It should just be an interest free loan which is what Niti Aayog wants to make it.
It's not just that.
Even in the government, the idea behind pushing basic income now,
is that all these big, heavy social policy programs,
- NREGA, which is the Employment Guarantee Scheme;
or the PDS, which is the Food Support Scheme;
are corrupt, they're inefficient, they're leaking.
Let's merge everything into one swift transfer.
We have JAM, which is of course Jan Dhan,
which is financial inclusion Aadhaar and mobile,
so it's easy to make welfare into the swift transfer
and then forget about everything else.
But the thing is, we should remember why social welfare exists.
NREGA, which I'm sure a lot of people know about
has changed the way minimum wage is structured in rural India.
The PDS, despite its leakages, which I'm sure are many,
has actually prevented food riots in India in 2008,
and the two-year drought we just had.
So the PDS is also an important instrument.
We shouldn't get on the bandwagon of these sexy new policies
and say, "We'll try them too,"
without thinking about these considerations.
Now, when we were doing the pilot in Indore,
there was a lot of planning, prepping,
things we did, things we didn't do, things we wanted to do but couldn't do.
There was moments where things went completely awry.
Started to rain, rivers swelled up,
we had to carry bags of cash in makeshift boats to people's villages
so that they could access their money.
We tested everything many times.
We did awareness workshops.
We spoke to people, and we researched very systematically
what needed to be done
and what people were doing with their money.
And at the end of this two-year experiment in just four villages,
our recommendation finally was, yes, this can be tried for another trial.
The reason I'm discussing this right now
is because, just because an idea exists
doesn't mean it needs to be immediately implemented.
It needs to be tested.
It needs to have questions answered around it.
Just because Elon Musk is talking about it,
doesn't mean it's working in India.
Just like we test our vaccines, right?
I'm sure you guys are aware of the trials:
You start with a small sample, you expand it,
you check for the impact it's having on people,
you think about how you can move it to different...
each geography has a different impact.
And that's how social policy also needs to be designed.
Slowly, carefully, with careful checks at every step.
Because this is India, one size does not fit all.
Things go awry without us realizing
and whatever infrastructure you've created
doesn't necessarily respond to things.
That's what I've learned from my experience
and also from a big idea that was implemented,
which is demonetization.
We all know that when you come up with what seems like a really good idea,
but you don't think it through, things tend to go awry.
The other thing about basic income
is that it is so popular between the left and the right as well,
along the political spectrum.
The left, and I guess me as well,
think of it as an additional social welfare scheme
that needs to go hand-in-hand with some very core programs.
The right thinks of it
as a quick and dirty way to extend welfare to people
without having the government to employ large machinery.
Given that this is an idea that everyone loves,
you need to be suspicious about it.
You need to test it, repeatedly.
The other questions that basic income needs to answer
is stuff like: What is the impact on inflation?
How does India, as a labor surplus country,
respond to it with work?
How do we think about people assigning meaning to their lives
if work is taken care of?
Nothing has been decided.
I'll have you know
while there has been so much chatter about it,
there's very little evidence.
Like I said, this thing exists in the economic survey,
and there's been one pilot in fouri villages of India
which I was a part of.
I know that it's the only one.
Certainly, we're talking about it like it's happening.
I almost expected Mr. Jaitley to announce it in the budget,
as did many other people.
The thing is the reason I'm talking about
is that ideas exist and they're all very, very good.
The ones that are impacting the lives of a billion people in India
need to be tested.
To the idea that it is a snowflake, it needs to be nurtured.
Otherwise, it's just going to be a snowball
and it's going to smack you in the face.
Thank you.