India's social welfare schemes don't speak to each other: Andaleeb Rahman, Cornell University academic
Narendra Modi took in his third term were to transfer a new instalment of the PM-Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN), amounting to about Rs 20,000 crore, and to approve assistance to construct three crore houses under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana, indicating the priority the new government was according to social welfare schemes.
In a new book, The Future of India’s Social Safety Nets, Andaleeb Rahman and Prabhu Pingali, research associate and founding director, respectively, at the TataCornell Institute, Cornell University, argue that while “standalone welfare schemes are important to address various forms of human deprivation, it is imperative to think about social welfare as a ‘system’ of programmes (welfare support) with ‘development resilience’ as its overarching objective”.
In a Zoom interview from New York, Rahman speaks to ET about the threat from “new welfarism”, why inheritance tax could be an option and why it is too soon for universal basic income.Edited excerpts:
An overarching theme in your book is that India needs to take a systems approach to social welfare. What would that look like?
Right now, India’s (welfare) programmes are standalone schemes to address one kind of deprivation by a particular department—for eg, Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) exists as a solution to address maternal and child nutrition issues by the Ministry of Women and Child Development, while the public distribution system (PDS) exists as a household-level food security programme by the ministry of agriculture in a
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