Relevance : GS Paper II(Â Social Sector)
[ 1500 words summarized to 200 ]Â
Recently, Rahul Gandhi promised Minimum Income Guarantee for the poor.
Inferences from Minimum Income proposal
- market-led economic growth cannot by itself end poverty.
- direct state support to families is needed.
- strive to build a redistributive welfare state.
Questions that arise
- How the households will be identified ?
- What the scale of assistance would be?
- How the required resources will be raised?
Problems in executing Minimum Income Program
- greater chance of exclusion of the poor.
- no objective way of evaluating incomes of households in the informal sector.
- Poverty-selections give too much discretion to the field bureaucracy
- Funds required will be re-appropriated from those spent on other program.
- food transfers are far more likely to be effective than cash transfers to end hunger
- Cash transfers also are inflationary in ways that food transfers are not.
Way Forward
- There should be no cutting back on existing subsidies to the poor
- Subsidies to the middle-classes can be curtailed
- taxing the wealth of super-rich
- Ending the tax holidays to private businesses
- maternity benefits for all women in informal work
- transfers to farmers for every acre of land they cultivate
- Expanding the National Employment Guarantee Scheme
- universal public healthcare and public-funded education at all levels.
