Urban Indians prefer job guarantee over cash handouts, says LSE study

 Even most of those who had received cash handouts in the wake of the pandemic preferred having job protection.

A majority of urban Indians left unemployed by the coronavirus pandemic want the government to guarantee them jobs as it does for people in rural areas, says a study by the London School of Economics.
An overwhelming 82% of respondents surveyed for the report ‘City of dreams no more, a year on worklessness and active labor market policies in urban India’ favored job guarantees followed by 16% for cash transfers.

Even most of those who had received cash handouts from the government in the wake of the pandemic preferred having job protection over financial assistance, wrote Swati Dhingra and Fjolla Kondirolli, the authors of the report.

The federal government currently guarantees at least 100 days of employment in a financial year to every household in rural areas.

Budget allocation for the program was stepped up last year amid the pandemic, and authorities reported as much as a 50% increase in enrollment for the program.

The study recontacted respondents in India covered in an earlier survey following the first wave of the pandemic. Unlike last year when Prime Minister Narendra Modi imposed a sweeping nationwide lockdown to stop the virus’s spread, movement curbs this time around were localized with limited economic fallout.