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.
