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Comment by hsuresh | Hacker News Reader

> I feel like universal basic income will only work in progressive societies that have gotten used to various social programs before. They might go bankrupt long before any of it's population actually receive money due to corruption.

I actually think it is the opposite. UBI might work better precisely because corruption prevents other welfare schemes reaching the target population.

At least in theory, the direct cash transfer should help pull out a lot of people from abject poverty. The article quotes a jump from 22% absolute poverty to 0.5% - if it does that, it would go a long way in accelerating growth in India.

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The bigger question is how they will fund this. India is know for the capital flight. Rich people aren't paying taxes in India so the government doesn't have much money to spend on social welfare. Unless I'm wrong here? I'm not too familiar with India so please excuse any cultural ignorances.

I wonder if the plan here is to create a market by creating consumers. If enough consumers are present and the govt requires companies to invest money in building industries in India, in order to serve those consumers, they can probably speed up development. Where do they get money? "Quantitative easing"

The argument for direct cash transfers (not really UBI, but a predecessor of sorts) was that, there are already millions being spent on subsidies and other welfare schemes, and only a small percentage of them actually reach the needy.

They simply redirect funding from existing welfare scheme to this type of scheme, particularly the least enforced, most corrupt and inefficient scheme.

A UBI would be much easier to audit. Your problem might be identity theft or the creation of entirely fictitious person.

But as the article outlines, the schemes that India needs to cut to fund it comprise half of India's annual budget - which means less spending on things India desperately lacks like infrastructure - and each recipient gets $113 per annum, which is a undoubtedly a real boon to some of them but really doesn't go that far towards accelerating growth in India. And the corrupt are not going to find it any harder to siphon funds from unworldly, unbanked and often illiterate people living (or better still, recently deceased) in remote villages than they are to siphon off funds spent in other ways. Unless and until India gets dumbphone-based banking, the sheer logistics of dispensing money to a billion people is pretty mindboggling.

Not sure if you are from India or not, but it looks like you are not aware of how banking has improved in India.

Dumbphone banking is possible for more than a billion people (as long as they can afford a dumbphone service and have Aadhar - biometric ID). I say billion and not all Indians, because there's < 300 million Indians who are yet to get their Aadhar ID cards. With UBI even the poorest should be able to afford a dumb phone and a phone service.

India has all the needed infra to dispense money to a billion people. All it needs to ensure is, if UBI is implemented, remove every single subsidy thats currently given.

What would be worse, is to have a haphazard implementation of UBI without removing subsidies, and people revolting at removal of either of these schemes.

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