India Today

Point of View: Back to basics

By proposing to ‘target’ beneficiaries, the proposed variants of a Universal Basic Income become oxymorons, and they are hard to implement.

It's budget season in an election year. No wonder the idea of a 'Universal Basic Income' (UBI), with its all-too-obvious surface appeal, is getting a thorough airing: from Rahul Gandhi's attention-grabbing announcement of a 'minimum income support' for the poor to Sikkim's announcement a fortnight earlier that it would become the 'first state to roll out UBI'.

The two key principles of UBI are 'universal' coverage and

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