APL (Ajiken Power Lunch)

APL (Ajiken Power Lunch) is a lunchtime workshop open to public, including IDE staffs, visiting research fellows, IDEAS students, outside researchers and graduate students. This workshop provides a platform for presentation of any work in progress where we can discuss in either English or Japanese.

Those who would attend a seminar are asked to announce yourself to receptionists on your arrival at the IDE and to obtain APL Organizers' signature on your admission card after the seminar.

July 14, 2016. (Thursday) 12：30-14：00

Institute of Developing Economies, Japan External Trade Organization C22 Meeting Room 　

The Emancipatory Power of Basic Income: An Optimistic Note from Indian Experience

An Unconditional Basic Income has relevance to a wide range of societal contexts, though what it specifically addresses and impacts may differ from one to another. Within any given country, again, what it means and what effects it has varies from one class to another and one milieu to another. While to one class basic income means better food security, to another class basic income means freedom from monotony and drudgery of routine and alienating labour. At least take a break from it to do something of one’s own choice for a while. Or basic income can give a young person breathing time to experiment or get trained and then make a better choice of her vocation. The possibilities are varied and aplenty.

My presentation will focus on how an unconditional basic income can address poverty. On what it can potentially do to the rural poor in a developing country like India. Imagine a peasant couple in a remote village, who have half a hectare of rain-fed land, and earn their living by working as wage labourers with about four children and an elderly parent to look after. Their life is characterised primarily by two things: uncertainty both about rains and employment, and deeply in debt. The sources of income are uncertain. What they earn through wages, they feed themselves and also repay the debt. Often it so happens that they repay their debt through labour, which means that they never get to receive wages in cash, unless they borrow from same landlord again. It is a trap that they live in and they cannot imagine how to get out of it.

Dr. Sarath Davala (Coordinator of India Network for Basic Income (INBI))

Kumiko MAKINO

English