The Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) is a women’s trade union in India, with two million members working in the informal economy. One of our on-going projects at SEWA has been to explore ways in which its members can overcome extreme insecurity. As part of this exploration we carried out three pilots, in which thousands of men, women, and children received a modest, monthly direct transfer unconditionally – a basic income. Their subsequent experience was monitored through surveys that compared their experience with a control group of thousands who did not receive the payments. The methodology and results are described in a book written by SEWA and the collaborators in the project, Guy Standing, Sarath Davala, Soumya Kapoor.

SEWA started its experimentation with a small study in Delhi. We substituted rations for poor families with cash put into bank accounts in the name of the eldest woman. We found that the women managed the cash well, choosing whatever their family needed. A group of women went together to buy food from the wholesale markets. They were not only able to afford better quality grain than usual, but were also able to add pulses, milk and eggs to their diet. Their nutrition improved.

The next two experiments were in rural Madhya Pradesh and involved over 11,000 individuals. About half received the basic income while the others made up the control group. Both women and men received a monthly income directly in their accounts. The children’s cash was paid to their mothers. This basic income was unconditional, individual, and universal within a single village.

Prejudice: a counterargument without substance

The benefits of having this extra money were once again plain to see, and as a result of these experiments SEWA became one of the earliest advocates of basic income in India. It is a way to reduce poverty and empower women at the same time. However, we find ourselves continually facing criticism for this view.

The arguments against cash transfers are emotionally appealing. One we hear frequently is that women will become disempowered because men will seize the cash to increase their consumption of liquor. Another argument is that women will drop out of employment with UBI, thereby reducing India’s already low female labour force participation rate even further. UBI will thus disempower women by pushing them back into the home.

SEWA’s experiments showed that neither of these claims is valid. On the contrary, we found that the transfers had five types of effect. Taken together, they show why a basic income could be transformative.