When I was a kid, everyone talked about Parkinson's Law.
The law was
simple: Work increases to fill up the time required for its completion. The Indian bureaucracy is a classic example. It keeps growing bigger and bigger doing less and less. What's worse, we keep paying more and more taxes to afford it.
The power to audit the bureaucracy's performance lies with our politicians and, as we all know, there's a cosy, profitable nexus out there. So even though all Governments talk about cutting expenses, reducing manpower and making taxes fewer and simpler, nothing ever happens. Every year, State expenditure grows. Every year, more Government jobs are created, no, not to make life easier for you and me but to make it tougher. For more Government jobs mean more hands outstretched for bribes. Every year, the tax laws get more and more complex, so much so that today no one can fill his own returns without help. The present Government has, in fact, encouraged a brand new profession called tax fillers, who do exactly the same job that letter writers outside the post office once did for illiterates. The only difference is that even the literate can't fill in today's tax forms.
Wouldn't it be simpler to make one page tax forms on the premise that not all Indian citizens are criminals or tax evaders? Can't we, in modern India where tax revenues are galloping, make trust the new basis for tax submissions? The errant guys can always be caught.
Everyone knows who they are and where to find them. Just that most of them are rich, powerful, politically well placed and well beyond the reach of the humble tax officer.
So, instead of catching these evaders, we keep introducing new taxes and rationalising old ones in a way that the common man's harassed.
And it's not just Central taxes. State taxes are going the same way.
Over the past few months, we are paying much more for electricity, water, rent. The increase in rates was done so sneakily that most of us did not know what was happening till the bills hit us. Add to that our battered mindset, used to years of being brutalised by uncaring Governments, and you know why the outrage is so muted. When I was a kid in Kolkata I remember how a one paise rise in bus fare rise would provoke extreme and violent street protests. Today, prices and taxes double at the drop of a hat and we keep quiet. Either we have become too rich or too callous. You decide.
Inflation has reached a flashpoint now. We are losing money in our banks every day because bank interest is way lower than the rate of inflation. Also, bank interest is taxable, which makes it tougher for those who live off their savings. The old are worst hit. Inflation erodes their savings. Taxes eat into their interest. So angry is the middle class that the Congress is losing every bypoll, every election.
Despite having a world class economist as Prime Minister, no one trusts their ability to manage the economy.
The excuse is inflation. But what's the single most important factor, apart from increased taxes, that stokes inflation? Fuel prices. Fuel prices impact everything. Yet the common man is never told what the actual cost of fuel is, though we are constantly badgered by statistics that claim the State-owned oil companies are making huge losses to subsidise us. What's hidden from you and me is that there are a whole lot of invisible taxes and duties the Government collects from every litre of fuel sold.
In other words, the much maligned Left is right. They have always resisted the hike in fuel prices. Imagine what havoc the proposed rise of 30 per cent in the price of petrol and 10 per cent in the price of diesel could play with all prices, across the board. In February, when fuel prices were last hiked, Brinda Karat wrote to Murli Deora pointing out that despite all the stories about State-run oil companies being in a mess, the exchequer was actually gaining Rs 35,000 crore this year and earning Rs 180,000 crore from higher.
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