The basic income grant is a government facilitated program that guarantees that no citizen’s income falls below a level necessary to meet their most fundamental needs. It is an effective and equitable solution to poverty especially in many countries in the global north and the global south such as Finland and India respectively. It is a universal system that does not necessarily require individuals to work and therefore assists the working poor, the single parents, and the homeless and other people experiencing varied problems. The focus of the paper will be on analyzing the value of the basic income grant and its feasibility considering India and Finland as the case study.
The basic income grant is important to Finland as it will help dismiss poverty, motivate people to start working and decreasing the rates of unemployment ( Davala et al., 2015). With the thousands of skilled engineers that were laid off by Nokia, the country is presented with a large population of unemployed people who would benefit from the guaranteed income. The proposal of the program also suggests that all the people in the society will get regular amount from the government regardless of their income or whether they work. However, the feasibility of this plan remains questionable. It remains a puzzle to see if people will pursue jobs or instead start their businesses. Because the income is free regardless of working condition of a person, some people may be tempted to squander their money on unproductive areas such as alcohol. It is also yet to be established if those who are liberated from unemployment will use their liberty to gain education and set themselves up for new careers (Gans, 2014).
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Welfare programs in India have been identified as the greatest source of poverty. The Indian government has however planned to scrap off the schemes for a universal basic income that will not only be disbursed to the poor but everybody else. The basic income grant is seen as a suitable alternative to the welfare schemes due to the massive inefficiencies and corruptions associated with the former as asserted by Gorz (2013). The feasibility of the scheme remains a big issue due to its affordability that may risk excluding a huge chunk of the population from the program. It would also be difficult to gauge who was poor and who was not when searching for the right population to benefit from the funds. The Indian citizens will, therefore, have to be heavily taxed to see the program through. Problems may also arise with the crediting of cash to the bank accounts in the rural areas where there is absence of dense banking network. Therefore, many poor Indians may struggle to access the money ( Van Parijs & Vanderborght, 2015).
James Ferguson weighs in on the matter by asserting that there should be an expansion and creation of social welfare programs that target the less fortunate by creation of schemes that directly transfer small amounts of money to large numbers of low-income earners. (White, 2016) He argued that such schemes should prevail in the countries of the global south. On his part, Benjamin Selwyn argues that poverty is a recipe for the exclusion of the people from the benefits of the market system (Selwyn, 2014). He adds that for there to be economic growth among the people, and then they need to be incorporated into the systems through employment and schemes such as basic income grants. In conclusion, the basic income grant is an important scheme in ensuring equality in a country and giving the poor a chance to engage in economic activities that will mitigate their poverty. However, questions on its feasibility remains ranging from the availability of funds, government support and the use of the positive use of the money by the citizens.
References
Davala, S., Jhabvala, R., Standing, G., & Mehta, S. K. (2015). Basic income: A transformative policy for India . Bloomsbury Publishing.
Gans, H. J. (2014). Basic Income: A Remedy for a Sick Labor Market?. Challenge , 57 (2), 80-90.
Gorz, A. (2013). Beyond the Wage-based Society. Basic Income , 297.
Selwyn, B. (2014). The global development crisis . John Wiley & Sons.
Van Parijs, P., & Vanderborght, Y. (2015). Basic income in a globalized economy. Inclusive Growth, Development, and Welfare Policy, London: Routledge , 229-47.
White, S. C. (2016). James Ferguson, Give a Man a Fish. Reflections on the New Politics of Distribution. Book review.
