250 MIILLION ATTORNEYS FOR THE GOVERNMENT

TV show after show, the audience comprising Barrista coffee-sipping yuppies and their “piano class graduate” progeny in designer apparel are making our lives a common nonsensical hell hole.

Whenever the talk turns to “free water”, “free electricity” this “plague unto the republic” starts lawyering up on behalf of the government.  “Ooohh…how can you give all this free…who will pay for this…there is no free lunch…what about the economy?”

Yeah right – what about it, you dim-witted, Sula-wine-on-company-account-gulpers?

These folks have taken this entire “mind and body” shit too seriously.  I had no idea it is taught in power yoga class.  So while their smooth, perfumed bodies lie unwillingly where they truly belong – with the citizenry of this republic, their meagre-minds-for-rent cross over to the side of the government.  The brain was made to preempt this absurdity.  But it is conspicuous by its absence or passivity.  The rupee one lakh or more a year school either removed it or performed a lobotomy.

Hopefully in the absence of normal cerebral functionality, life’s hard lessons will cure  these salaried softies of their monthly bout of amnesia.  Then they may start remembering the fact that at the end of the previous month, the government took a big wet bite out of their incomes.  And the fact that every time they spend, the government takes another bite-sized nibble out of the expense.  That will be the “eureka” moment for the yuppies, when they realize that “direct taxes” and “indirect taxes” are not just phrases they learnt by rote to justify the 10 lakh rupees MBA that papa’s money bought them.

Ahhh…that was cathartic.

The fact is that barring the ingress of polluted air and egress of gas we pay for just about  everything in this country.  We pay through our noses, ears, mouths, navels…just about every aperture provisioned by mother nature.  And the government is always looking for new, lucrative holes to punch in our fiscal anatomies.

I reckon even a driver in Mumbai who barely earns Rs. 12000/- a month (and spends all of it and more) pays 15% of that – roughly Rs. 1800 a month in indirect taxes.  That’s Rs. 21600/- a year.  Small mercy that he is spared direct taxes.  The government will eventually get there, asking you to cut TDS at source for the driver and deposit it with them.  The same driver lives in a slum.  Now you may not believe this, but the average slum dweller typically spends more on electricity than the flat dweller.  A slum tenement does not get direct sunlight or sufficient air and the family has to leave the solitary light and fan on pretty much all day.  Where does the Rs. 1800 a month go?  Or where does the yuppy’s Rs. 100000/- a month go?  This question is not asked in this country.  It just goes – period.  Want something in return?  Pay additionally for it…

1.    Pay anywhere between Rs. 1000/- to Rs. 40000/- a month for your kid’s education.  And the schools and colleges suck, so pay more for the coaching class

2.    Pay for your water

3.    Pay for your electricity

4.    Pay for your own security guards at home, there’s no security on the streets anyways

5.    Pay toll for roads

6.    Get skinned by the hospitals

7.    Form Advance Locality Management committees, clean your galli and pay to lift garbage

When I was a kid,

(1)  Was almost free and good. Our taxes paid for it.  Now its expensive and lousy.

(2)  You had to pay for it but it was cheap

(3)  You had to pay for it but it was cheap

(4)  Was not really needed

(5)  You did not have to pay

(6)  For 6, folks like us could go to government hospitals…and our taxes paid for it

(7)  Was done by the municipaity and the salaries were paid out of our taxes

So between then and now, the volume of taxes collected has multiplied manifold and what we get in return dwindled down to almost nothing.  Even worse, we take this as par for the course (reference: the arguments defending the government on TV shows).

Pop quiz: If you were to be left on an island for six months as part of an endurance training (for which you paid!), given the following options with regards to what you could take with you, what would you choose:

OPTION 1 – water, food, clothes, books, medicines.

OPTION 2 – Freeways, flyovers, nuclear power plants, fiber optic networks, 300 feet statue of an inspiring historical leader.

I think it is time that schools introduced courses in irreverence where kids are made to enact plays with dialogs such as

“क्या रे?  पिछले महिने tax भेजा उसका क्या किया रे? बेटी का इस्कूल इधर मेरेको call कर रहा है पैसा भेजने को.  ठेहेर तेरेको conference पे लेता हू principal के साथ.  आपस में निपटा लो.  मै डबल डबल भरने को अलीबाग से आयेला है क्या? बात करता है मेरे से...काम धंदा छोड के तुम लोग दिल्ली के election में shining मारो TVचेनल पे!  बकवास बंद कर!!  इस्कूल को कल तक पैसा भेज दे ...”

Or

“क्योन बे?  जनवरी से tax का हिसाब भेजा नाही बे तूने?  क्या?  … (pause while the other party speaks) … टाईम नही मिला?  साले तू अकेला busy है दुनिया में बाकी हम सब झक मार रहे है क्या?  पांच दिन में मेरेको हिसाब मेरे टेबल पर चाहिये नहीतो Lokpal को call करके तेरा game कर देगा मै, क्या?  बाद में बोलने का नही - भाई लोग ने वाट लगाया करके.”

That leaves us with TYPE 2 from the audience.  We scrutinized the yuppies, now we turn to the yu”bb”ies – the business folk.  These guys have a point.  They are not ignorant like the yuppies.  Read http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/magazine/in-india-tax-evasion-is-a-national-sport-07282011.html.  In case the link disappears in future, I reproduce the gist here…

Title: In India, Tax Evasion Is a National Sport

India loses 14 trillion rupees ($314 billion) from tax evasion annually, depriving it of funds for investment in roads, ports, and power, says Arun Kumar, author of The Black Economy in India.

14 trillion rupees is 14 lakh crore rupees.  India’s total tax revenues in 2014-2015 are estimated at approximately 13.64 lakh crore rupees.  I got this number from the excel posted by the Finance Ministry at http://indiabudget.nic.in/rec.asp .  So don’t even think about doubting my source.  Let me know if you would like me to email it to you.  That means,  we collect as much tax as we fail to collect.  And the corresponding deficit is  around 5 lakh crore rupees.  Clearly we are a poor country with plennnnty of money.

Consider this.  The salaried class has all its tax escape routes cut.  The mazdoor earns peanuts.  So you got to suspect the yubby when it comes to tax evasion.  And hence my conclusion is that the yubby has got it right.  He pays nothing and hence expects nothing in return.  And hence the demand “not to give them anything free.”.  What the yubby really is saying is – “who asked the yuppy and the mazdoor to pay taxes?  Let them evade taxes like me, and then it will be a fair and square हिसाब.  No give, no take.”

We shall leave the yubby untouched for another day.  Possibly for the day when we can say to him “tax भर बेटा, नही तो अरविंद आयेगा.”  Gawd I hate this – I finally gave myself away.