A report commissioned by the Economic Advisory Council (EAC) to the Prime Minister on Wednesday suggested that the government roll out a universal basic income (UBI) scheme to reduce stark income gaps and launch a guaranteed employment programme for the urban unemployed. Citing the country’s uneven income distribution, the report also advocated raising the minimum wage and increasing government investment on the social sector to make vulnerable groups more resilient to shocks and prevent them from falling into poverty.
According to the report that is titled, “The State of Inequality in India”, given the disparity in labour force participation rates between rural and urban areas, the urban equivalent of demand-based and guaranteed employment programmes such as MGNREGS should be implemented so that surplus labour can be rehabilitated.
It added that boosting the minimum wage and implementing universal basic income are two ideas that can help close the income gap and ensure that wages are distributed equally in the labour market. The EAC-PM stated that charting the mobility into and out of poverty is the most significant part of quantifying poverty in a multi-dimensional environment.
According to the results of the three rounds of the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS), the top 1% of the population possessed 6-7% of total income earned in the three years to 2019-20, with the top 10% holding a third.