As usual, our PM’s addresses these days including the latest one at World Economic Forum on January 17 are nothing but optics, shorn of any substance. He is showcasing the emergence of a digitally vibrant New India which has no place for the vulnerable. The digitalization of the economy and the other activities is welcome but there should be concrete measures to bring vulnerable population under the programmes, not accentuating the digital divide within the society.The Central government has defied all novel suggestions made by leading economists like Amartya Sen, Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee and Raghuram Rajan, and instead opted for a shaky dependence on huge bank loan-based revival without taking into account the grim reality that nobody, even those who have funds, are in a mood to spend.The poor and the jobless, in staggering numbers, can be made to spend, and thus boost consumption, only through direct transfer of funds which is possible through this universal basic income.The Universal Basic Income (UBI) issue generated a big debate in the West, especially the USA where the issue of inequality came to the fore in a big way during the last presidential elections. Prominent Democratic Party leader and Bernie Sanders who was at one time in the running for US President, has been talking about the economies being run in the interests of one per cent of the population and promised to change the system to favour 99 per cent.Even new generation capitalists like Marc Zuckerberg and Chris Hughes, co-founders of Facebook, have argued for UBI as not necessarily a comprehensive solution, but as at least a moderating analgesic for the severity of income inequality and poverty in countries, including global powers like America.
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