As the Indian government launched one of the largest cash transfer schemes to move over Rs 30,000 crore into the account of woman JanDhan account holders and over Rs 5000 crore into linked LPG connections, the Indian exercise is finding traction in other countries.On Friday Canada’s PM Justin Trudeau announced he would pay $2000 every month for four months to those who have lost their incomes. Earlier US president Donald Trump had announced a similar support program for those hit hardest by the Covid-19 crisis.As the pandemic swept through the world, threatening to lay waste both developed and developing economies, countries responded in two different ways to tackle the fallout.First was through fiscal and monetary measures, but the second was through income support programmes to the most vulnerable and small businesses. The latter, according to economists and policy experts is the key to bridging the gap between a devastating economic downturn and hopefully an eventual recovery.Interestingly, when Prime Minister Modi held a video conference with Indian envoys around the globe, one of the things that emerged was a similarity between Indian and US approaches on income support policies. This even as Washington and New Delhi took very different paths in otherwise tackling the pandemic.But both the US and Canadian programs will only reach the beneficiaries several months down the line, while the Indian payments have already started.On March 26, the Modi government announced a set of cash transfer and related benefits that would use the JAM (JanDhan-Aadhaar-Mobile) backbone to implement large-scale, technology-enabled and real-time direct benefit transfers. Having set this system up in the first term of the government this would be an ideal time to use it.As Jahangir Aziz of JP Morgan Chase Bank wrote, “the government’s efforts over the last five years make India one of the best placed economies to deliver such cash transfers.”According to the Indian government announcement, all the transfer will be completed by April 9. Apart from the direct transfer to bank accounts, the support program will see Rs 500 into women’s accounts for three months, increase in MNREGA wage to Rs 202 a day from Rs 182 to benefit 13.62 crore families; ex-gratia of Rs 1,000 to 3 crore poor senior citizen, poor widows and poor disabled. The government will also front-load Rs 2,000 paid to farmers in first week of April under existing PM Kisan Yojana to benefit 8.7 crore farmers, as well as extend insurance cover of Rs 50 Lakh per health worker fighting COVID-19.On March 27, US president Donald Trump also announced a set of similar income support measures. Most adults will get $1,200/- in this FY. For every qualifying child age 16 or under, the payment will be an additional $500.Single adults with Social Security numbers who have an adjusted gross income of $75,000 per year or less will get the full amount. Married couples with no children earning $150,000 or less will receive a total of $2,400.However, answering questions on Friday, Trump acknowledged that it would be many months before the US cash support could be transfered, because of a complicated system. “We're sending the money to the states. Once the money is sent to the states, then the states, whether they're Republican or Democrat, have to get the money out to the people. Hopefully they’ll be able to do it.But many of those states have 40-year-old computers. I don't know that they're equipped.”