India’s Basic Income Experiment by Rasmus Schjoed https://socialprotection-humanrights.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Indias-Basic-Income-Experiment-PP21.pdf
Cash transfers will obviously not solve all issues faced by vulnerable people but, given how complex issues of poverty are, it is amazing how much can be done simply by providing people with a small extra income on a regular and predictable basis.
Basic Income: A Transformative Policy for India https://www.environmentandurbanization.org/basic-income-transformative-policy-india
Countering critics’ expectation that providing a basic income would lead to squandered spending, the beneficiaries quickly made improvements to basic living conditions, nutrition, schooling, and other areas. By the end of the pilot, almost twice as many households in the basic income villages that did not previously have a latrine in their home now possessed one, compared to the control villages. Consumption of fresh vegetables in the basic income villages increased by 888 per cent. And illness levels were lower in the basic income villages than in the control villages.
The authors believe firmly in the transformational power of unconditional cash transfers. A key example of this from the Madhya Pradesh work concerns indebtedness, which is chronic and common in the area. Among the households that received basic incomes, debt was dramatically reduced both early in the pilot and after it concluded. Not only was the basic income amount used to pay off existing debt, it also reduced the likelihood of individuals securing more – and more exploitative – loans.