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Amend Constitution & Relevant Laws to Legalize Act of God
- Published on 12 September 2020
The Centre’s two debt-burdening GST compensation options (GST-COs), offered to States, should trigger a serious debate on ‘Act of God’ (AoG).
India should provide constitutional and statutory protection to AoG that empowered Union Finance Ministry to contrive GST-COs. The AoG clarity on the Statute Book can help nip in the bud potential litigation in commercial contracts. It can also help arrest burgeoning trust deficit in the Centre-State relations.
Indian Constitution is outdated. It left out AoG. The name ‘God’, however, figures 13 times in the Constitution in relation to oath/swearing in of key personnel in the overall governance system.
Parliament should thus debate whether the Constitution should be amended to specify and define AoG to cap political liability of authorities. Should it be defined as exclusive privilege of the central government? Or, should all three tiers of governments have the right to renege or tweak their obligations towards the citizens? Should invocation of AoG enjoy immunity from litigation?
Statutory protection against any official decision taken in the name of AoG can be granted by taking a leaf from The Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act (FRBMA), 2003.
FRBMA says: “No suit, prosecution or other legal proceedings shall lie against the Central Government or any officer of the Central Government for anything which is in good faith done or intended to be done under this Act or the rules made thereunder”.
It adds: “No civil court shall have jurisdiction to question the legality of any action taken by, or any decision of, the Central Government, under this Act”.
Parliament should debate laws that require amendments to empower different stakeholders of economy to invoke AoG.
A fleeting look at Indian laws show that AoG finds mention only in three laws. None of them define AoG. The AoG-carrying laws are: The Railways Act, 1989 (RA), The Mines Act, 1952 and The Indian Carriage of Goods by Sea Act, 1925.
World Now Grapples With Pandemic Management Trade-Offs
- Published on 31 July 2020
(Image Courtesy: taxindiaonline.com)
“Trade-Offs are central to economies, as they are to life. They are at the heart of economics because neither the decision-makers nor society can have everything it wants”. Two American economists, Donald E. Campbell and Jerry S. Kelly stated this way back in May 1994.
They penned their thoughts in an article on “Trade-off Theory” in The American Economic Review. Twenty-six years later, trade-offs have become central to prevention and control of Covid-19 pandemic.
Trade-Offs pendulum has swung across the world from obsessive bias for the lockdowns to the nightmares over the cost of lockdowns. Countries are struggling to strike a balance between preventing Covid deaths and preventing socio-economic crisis.
The shift is becoming palpable as lockdowns are hard to enforce for several months. And botched lockdowns have contributed to spread of virus in over-populated countries such as India and Pakistan. Defiance of the law of land is fashionable in such countries. Rampant poverty also forces people to eke out a living at risk of catching infection.
Reputed global institutions are now computing the humungous costs due to restrictions of all sorts on human mobility imposed to rein in pandemic. The hidden costs include actual non-Covid deaths & potential deaths due to negligence of non-Covid patients in future.
Trade-offs with Corona prevention have several dimensions and variants. The dimensions are: Lives versus Livelihood; health vs wealth; deaths vs jobs lost; Covid-cum-lockdown vs global $30 trillion fiscal deficit for 2020-2023 and Covid deaths vs non-Covid deaths.
India’s Lockdown Necessitates More Parkinson’s Laws
- Published on 03 July 2020
(C. Northcote Parkinson - Image Courtesy: openlibrary.org)
“Work expands to fill the time available for its completion”. This Satirical, maxim stands validated 1000% by India’s extended lockdown, lauded globally for its stringency.
Known as Parkinson’s Law (PL), this maxim now needs strong articulation in the light of amazing speed & efficiency with which bureaucracy spun rules & orders to keep itself & others busy.
Lockdown’s diktats have had multiplier effect as they keep citizens busy during the shutdown & even under the phased unlocking. A law-abiding citizen is always on his toes as he/she has to keep abreast of dynamic regulations for remaining compliant.
If PL creator, C. Northcote Parkinson, were alive, he would have certainly polished Parkinson’s. laws. He might have added a few more.
Dr. Parkinson would certainly have been overwhelmed by unprecedented rise in workload for all during the total shutdown of India beginning midnight of 24th March. The diktats issued by bureaucracy covers all activities in all spheres of life.
Take the simple case of charity. Ideally, one should not disclose whether one has helped the needy. A Government department, however, decided to create a data bank on this.
Learn From Past To Make Atmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan An Eternal Quest
- Published on 24 May 2020
(Image Courtesy: taxindiaonline.com)
Is India's first electric typewriter (ET) show-cased in any museum as a symbol in Self-reliance? Does the company that produced it exists as a public enterprise now?
The answer is No. And there hangs countless tales of self-reliance (SR) goals that failed or fizzled out for different reasons including shifts in political perception of SR.
Before latching on to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s SR vision, we should understand why our quest for SR has been a mixed bag of failures and successes. SR has never been addressed as a complex challenge, requiring initiatives at all levels of economy, governance and society. It thus often gets reduced to a mere political slogan spun in a challenging situation or at best a burst of disjointed initiatives.
The sweet, sour and bitter lessons from the past right from British India’s days of Swadeshi should lay the foundation for PM’s “clarion call for Atmanirbhar Bharat”.
Mr. Modi has actually pitched for self-reliance ever periodically ever since he became PM. Recall his speech captioned “Self-reliance (aatma-nirbharta) in defence offsets essential for the security (aatma-raksha) of the nation” delivered on 4th July 2014.
Before discussing SR’s complexity & disconnect between slogan & actions, we need to recollect SR tales. They can serve as the building blocks for a wholesome aatma-nirbharta.
Revert first to ET tale. On 9th May 1975, Communications Minister Dr. Shanker Dayal Sharma, presented to Prime Minister Mrs. Indira Gandhi, India’s first ET. She described it as “a small but significant step in our progress towards self-reliance”.