'Why attack kerosene and gas users?'

Professor R Vaidyanathan

The Budget is basically balancing the government kitty or pocket which is fully torn. It is the salaried class which gets hit since it is easy to have TDS by government than collect from crores of business. Govt machinery adopts easy methods.

I'm not being cynical. As per IT statistics, there are less than 10,000 chemists wholesalers/retailers in our whole Punya Bhumi who are taxed. Karnataka alone has more than 100,000 in number. There are less than 5,000 or so doctors in Mumbai who are under tax net. These are mid-nineties figures since after that the government stopped publishing this.

In theory all taxable income should be taxed. But the variation in agricultural income is not protected by insurance or derivative products in our country. So farmers are left to fend for themselves if the sigma of income is high. Hence taxing that is difficult.

Our tax coverage is very low and it is like Hindi film vamp's dress coverage. In a sense, Sinha says drink more foreign whisky, do more SMS on cell phone and eat less (gas price gone up).

Instead of subsidies on gas, why not subsidy in the form of NPA's to all big businesses. Why attack only kerosene and gas users? Mrs Sinha's Birth Day was on February 28. What a gift by loving husband!

We need to integrate our economy domestically before trying to integrate it globally.

Lessening any subsidy is not bad. But is it a real subsidy? Is IOC etc run to full efficiency? Also what about subsidised Bungalows in Delhi? Do they pay market rent? The comman man is not a fool.

The Government in general is against entreprenuership. Because it encourages less dependancy on state and develops a controll free situation. All governments stifle enterprises. IT industry grew inspite ofor due to lack of attention from Govt

Professor R Vaidyanathan teaches finance at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore.

YOU MAY ALSO WANT TO READ:
The Rediff Budget Special
The Rail Budget 2002-03
The Economic Survey 2001-02
More Budget Stories
Money