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India should jettison its flawed tobacco taxation & comply with WHO norms
- Published on 05 July 2015
(Image Courtesy: WHO)
‘From sleek packaging to exotic flavours, bidis getting makeover to lure urban smokers’. So went the headline to the news dated-lined 10th June 2015 carried by a leading Indian business daily.
Such analysis is done after the presentation of annual budget almost every year. It shows continuation of a policy that favours production and usage of low-cost bidis/beedis. It is ostensibly a pro-poor (pro-death in effect) stance of India’s tobacco products taxation policy.
While the Government hikes the excise duty on cigarettes almost every year, it shies away from doing the same in the case of bidis. Such skewed taxation is not reducing the country’s total tobacco consumption. It is merely shifting the demand from high-taxed expensive cigarettes to short-length cigarettes and to bidis.
The excise duty on hand-rolled and machine-rolled bidis has been increased only twice during the last 9 years, the last revision being done in 2012. The Government continues to exempt small producers of bidis and the ones that make unbranded bidis from excise impost.
Inertia at the Time of Crisis
- Published on 04 July 2015
Agrarian crisis has been an integral feature of Indian farming, politics and governance for many decades. Political resolutions affirming commitment to the cause of farmers, rosy promises to growers in political manifestos, rhetorical speeches in Parliament and State assemblies have not eased the agrarian distress across the country, excluding a few regions of robust farming.
The Governments thus come and go. Expert Committees are formed and are forgotten with the Government adopting pick-&-choose approach towards implementing their recommendations. Even setting up of two high-profile Commissions, National Commission on Agriculture (NCA) and National Commission on Farmers (NCF, have not changed the ground reality. In the case of these panels too, the Government adopted piece-meal approach. It avoided going the whole hog in developing a total package to improve agricultural and other incomes earned by farmers.
A comprehensive analysis of major factors underlying the crisis and a multi-facet strategy to resolve it has been penned by me in a article contributed to Farmers Forum Magazine June-July 2015 issue. Here is the article. PDF Continue reading
Time to Stand up & Crave for the good side of 1975 Emergency!
- Published on 25 June 2015
Chant India First; Duties First
(Indira Gandhi-Edited Image Courtesy: inc.in)
June is the month when rights-obsessed democrats start bemoaning infamous Internal Emergency imposed by Mrs. Indira Gandhi on 25th June 1975. They write columns and give interviews, criticizing the ‘darkest chapter’ in India’s post-Independence history. They want to periodically refresh an aura around themselves for having gone to jail just like the freedom fighters during the British Raj.
This June is no different. While berating the Emergency, BJP mentor L.K. Advani, has voiced apprehensions about the unnamed forces that have the potential to impose emergency in the future. The Opposition interpreted it as a veiled attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi. This is notwithstanding the fact that Mr. Modi has so far been over-cautious in taking a stand on contentious political issues and has thus harmed his image as a tough taskmaster.
Finance Minister, Arun Jaitley found time during his on-going visit to the US to chip in his comment on the issue. Mr. Jaitley, who had last year too blogged on the issue, had dubbed emergency as “the worst post independence chapter of the Indian democracy.”
Such repeated, scathing criticism of Emergency and selective recall of developments during that 19-month period is distorting history. It is giving a wrong impression to the people who were too young or were not born at that time.
Unlike visionary PM late Rajiv Gandhi, neither his wife nor his progeny nor the Congress Party have the courage to put 1975 Emergency in perspective.
The timing for imposition of Internal Emergency was horribly wrong. It coincided with the adverse outcome of electoral litigation that left Mrs. Indira Gandhi’s survival as PM & as parliamentarian hanging by thread.
No one can dispute the well-known facts that fundamental rights were suspended. The Judiciary, the Press and other institutions were maimed or made pliable or simply acquiesced in to diktats. Without contesting such sordid happenings, this column would focus on the good developments that happened during the Emergency. It would also give certain background of the Emergency that jailed leaders don’t talk as that would puncture their sacrifice balloon.
Five National Challenges Await PM Modi’s Tough Decisions
- Published on 14 June 2015
(Edited Image Courtesy-narendramodi.in)
“No action, maximum oratory.” That is how Congress leader Rahul Gandhi described BJP’s slogan ‘Namo’ the other day while chiding NDA Government.
Such pithy comments from the Opposition make us wonder when Prime Minister Narendra Modi would shift the governance gears and thus silence his critics. Would he ever change over from incrementalism to tough reforms that he himself referred to repeatedly after coming to power?
Recollect his tweet from Goa on 14th June 2014: “Time has come to take tough decisions and whatever decision we will take will be in national interest”
On another occasion in the same month Mr. Modi said: “I know my popularity might go down due to these hard decisions, people might be annoyed with me, but they will appreciate it later.”
Mr. PM, time is flying away fast. As much as 20% of the mandate period has already been exhausted. Your popularity is declining. And disillusionment is growing among unemployed youth, farmers, minorities and businessmen.
Is your silence or muted stand on contentious issues a sign of political wisdom or cowardice? Do you realize that you are facing the risk of going down in the history as an escapist PM?