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Showing posts from April, 2019

Universal Basic Income vs Income Guarantee

unsplash-logo Image Credit - Abby0427 Yoga With Modi's farmer scheme ( PM Kisan ) and then Congress follow up with 72k per annum for poor ( NYAY ), a lot of debate has ensued on the efficacy of income guarantee as a tool of public welfare. There are many who argue the time has come for India to start giving some form of Social Security to its citizens while some others argue the exchequers (in)ability to do so. The financial debate aside, one major aberration I see is the conflation of the terms 'Income Guarantee' (IG) and 'Universal Basic Income' (UBI). I am no economist but I have keenly read about the UBI experiments in Scandinavian countries , libertarian geeks on the subject [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ] [ 4 ] [ 5 ] [ 6 ] [ 7 ] and the recent UBI proposal by the American Presidential candidate Andrew Yang . On the basis of this reading, I was able to conclude at least on one thing - IG and UBI are different concepts. UBI is supposed to be Universal - even an Aka...

The Curious case of Prosenjit Hazra - Part 2

Read Part 1 Manikarnika Crematorium Varanasi  Part 2: Prosenjit Hazra Prosenjit Hazra’s father, Biswajit Hazra migrated to Varanasi from East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) at the time of partition. Belonging to a poor Hindu family from East Bengal, he was still pursuing his graduation when partition happened. Varanasi was once called a ‘mini Kolkata’. Nearly three lakh Bengalis, who had settled here were engaged in various activities – trading, business and tourist services, among others. Biswajit knew a wealthy Banerjee family who had a large house [ 5 ] along the riverbank in Benaras and visited the place during vacations. When partition happened, Biswajit sought out the Banerjees who lived in Kolkata – the Banerjees could not invite him to Kolkata, but instead offered him to become the caretaker of the family’s ‘holiday mansion’ in Benaras. Living as a servant of the Banerjees, Prosenjit’s father completed his studies – as a caretaker, he had almost no income, the Bane...

The Curious case of Prosenjit Hazra - Part 1

Disclaimer: This is a purely fictional amalgamation of several real-life incidents I've read in the past several days formed into a contemporary tale running across threads of misinformation, cyber-security, terrorism et al. The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this series of posts are fictitious. No identification with actual persons (living or deceased), places, buildings, and products is intended or should be inferred. [ 0 ] Mumbai Police Headquarters Part 1: ACP Vaman Chandrakant ACP Vaman Chandrakant just couldn’t settle his mind on how he should present the case of Prosenjit Hazra. He had taken this case on the recommendation of his mentor ADGP Padmanabhan. “ Just like a case on the Underworld was a stepping stone to promotions in our times, it is going to be terrorism and cybercrime in yours – and this case has a perfect blend of both ” – Padmanabhan Sir had said. Padmanabhan himself had risen through the ranks of IPS to become the DIG ...