Milan Vaishnav talks about India's surprise strikes on Pakistan with Sadanand Dhume and Sukumar Ranganathan, and interviews Arvind Subramanian about a Universal Basic Income for India.
This week on Grand Tamasha, Milan Vaishnav sits down with Sadanand Dhume (Resident Scholar, American Enterprise Institute and Wall Street Journal columnist) and Sukumar Ranganathan (Editor-in-Chief, Hindustan Times) to discuss the aftermath of India’s targeted military strikes against Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) terrorist camps in Pakistan. The strikes were a direct response to the tragic February 14 JeM attack on Indian paramilitary forces in Jammu and Kashmir, in which at least forty Indian soldiers lost their lives. The three discuss the current mood in New Delhi and the implications for the coming general elections. They also debate the ramifications of the conflict for state politics in Jammu and Kashmir and the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) standing in the troubled state.
Then, Milan speaks with Arvind Subramanian, the former chief economic adviser to the Government of India, about the idea of a universal basic income (UBI) for India. Subramanian was responsible for putting the idea of an Indian UBI on the policy agenda with his landmark proposal in the government’s 2017-2018 Economic Survey. Since then, several states have implemented modified versions of a UBI and both the Congress Party and the ruling BJP have announced their own income support schemes. Subramanian, who is currently a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute of International Economics, weighs in on the competing proposals and outlines his own proposal for a QUBRI (Quasi-Universal Rural Basic Income).