Noting that India’s pension system is very fragmented, Mukul G Asher, Professorial Fellow at Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore, said there is need to popularise the National Pension System and make the Indira Gandhi National Old Age Pension Scheme more robust.
In a Skype interview with BusinessLine, Asher also called for a level playing field between the NPS and the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO), but said the government needs to do more homework on the alternatives. Excerpts:
How much progress has the National Pension System made in providing social security coverage?
When NPS was set up in 2004, it was aimed primarily at the civil servants and is working well. The challenge is to increase the number of non-civil servants joining the NPS…
Mukul G. Asher is a Professorial Fellow, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. This article was first published in Swarajya on 13 April 2016.