India’s main opposition Congress Party promised to implement a minimum income guarantee program for the poor if it triumphs in the nation’s general election this year.
“We cannot build a new India while millions of our brothers and sisters suffer the scourge of poverty,” Congress Party President Rahul Gandhi said on Twitter on Monday. “If voted to power in 2019, the Congress is committed to a Minimum Income Guarantee for every poor person, to help eradicate poverty & hunger.”
The pledge comes as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration implements a raft of populist measures ahead of the polls due by May, including an extension of government job and education placement quotas to millions of people.
Photo: Reuters
In the works is another plan to transfer about US$9.8 billion directly to farmers and ease their financial stress instead of offering subsidies, people with knowledge of the matter have said.
Senior Congress leader and former Indian minister of finance Palaniappan Chidambaram said that the nationwide program would be an adaptation of a universal basic income (UBI) scheme.
“It is not UBI,” Chidambaram said in an interview with Bloomberg Quint yesterday. “Under UBI the same amount of money is given to everyone, including you and me. This minimum income guarantee is progressive.”
Some of the “demerit subsidies” would be terminated to make fiscal space for such a program, he said.
A quasi UBI program for 75 percent of the rural population could cost about 2.64 trillion rupees (US$37.16 billion), or 1.3 percent of GDP, former chief economic adviser to the government of India Arvind Subramanian and others wrote in an article.
The Congress Party had previously pledged to write off farmer loans ahead of state elections last month, and followed through on its promise in three states where it won.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in