Money9 Edit | Welfare state: Full steam ahead

In 1942, in a report for the UK government, liberal economist William Beveridge proposed widespread reforms in social welfare and combining Oxford idealism, Cambridge practicality, and London School of Economics’ scientism. Beveridge would have been happy to see many administrators in India following his spirit almost eight decades later.

In 2018, the Centre has rolled out the biggest health insurance scheme in India. The Ayushman Bharat scheme that provides insurance cover of Rs 5 lakh per family per year has been extended to more than 10.74 crore needy families covering approximately 50 crore people. The Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi Yojana benefits 11.47 crore individuals, who were so far paid Rs 6,000 income support a year. This amount has now been raised to Rs 10,000.

The Pradhan Mantri Jan-Dhan programme is a programme of universal financial inclusion and can boast of 42.28 crore beneficiaries with a total of Rs 1.44 lakh in beneficiary accounts. The objective of the programme now is to open a bank account for all adults in the country. To fight the raging pandemic, the Centre also has announced free food grains to BPL families for a few months. In the budget for 2021-22, it has also raised allocation by 18% to rural job generation programme MGNREGA.

This school of thought got a shot in the arm on Sunday with the landslide victory of the Trinamool Congress in Bengal. Mamata Banerjee is a known votary of populist politics and she has promised a bag of goodies, including universal basic income to 1.6 crore families stretching her government’s finances that are not in the best of health.

 The merits of this surge in welfare economics, or populism, might be debated by economists, but it appears that given the situation the country is in, it is coming to the rescue of a vast majority of people at the base of the pyramid.