BHUBANESWAR: Universal Basic Income, or a single unconditional income that reduces government efforts to ensure last-mile delivery of individual social security schemes, could feature in the next economic survey India ’s Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Subramanian told a packed auditorium of students at an outreach here last week.“The idea is gaining a lot of resonance all over the world , especially in India. So you are really on the ball here. In fact, am a bit unhappy with you for stealing the thunder of the next survey because it is going to be one of the big topics (we are going to address in that survey. What are the pros and cons of having an universal basic income,” said Subramanian in reply to a question from a student.Universal basic income promises every citizen unconditional cash transfer in place of the many benefits, ( health for example) and subsidies (like Odisha’s popular Re 1 a kilo rice). The case for a single unconditional income is that it reduces government efforts in trying to make sure individual schemes reach the right targets. Its critics fear it will be expensive and disincentivise work or fail to bring the specific results that schemes like school midday meals achieve.Subramanian was speaking at the Economic Survey Outreach event organised by Odisha television and XIMB. On the question of whether India was ready for such an idea, he said, “The answer to whether or not we could have a universal basic income could well be “a yes, but under certain conditions.” The challenges, he added, would also be political.“It is always easy to give but very difficult to take away politically. Even though, ideally you might say, use this to replace other subsidies, let me guarantee you that when it comes to trying to replace some subsidies there will be a lot of noise. Both in terms of politics and economic there is a whole range of very important things we have to look into, and are going to look at, very carefully,” the CEA said.While the Swiss have recently voted down the idea in a referendum, Finland decided to test whether basic income can encourage a random group of unemployed. Guy Standing from the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, worked with elf-Employed Women’s Association on an experiment, funded by UNICEF and carried out in two villages of Madhya Pradesh in 2011. The findings suggest UBI, though offered here as a top-up to regular subsidies, led to greater self-employed farming and business activity and improved children’s health, reflected in higher average weight, he said in a published article.Speaking to ET , though, Subramanian cautioned that it was an academic exercise at this stage. “It is an idea that’s exciting the whole development community around the world, we should not be behind the curve…The job of the survey is to explore new ideas. It is not just what the government will immediately explore.”