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Erosion’ Risks can Transform BEPS into a Lame Duck
- Published on 23 November 2018
(River Erosion.Edited Image Courtesy: Central Water Commission)
Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) project is facing massive erosion threat on multiple fronts. The four main risks to the Project are: 1) absence of inclusivity; 2) complex challenges in plugging revenue leakages under existing tax treaties; 3) avoidance and evasion in booming digital economy due to problems in engineering customized taxation and 4) Divisive impact of different model tax conventions. All of them are supposed to achieve BEPS objectives.
Take first the inclusivity. Only 15 countries have so far ratified Multilateral Convention to Implement Tax Treaty Related Measures to prevent BEPS / Multilateral Instruments (MLI). As many as 76 countries/jurisdictions had signed or formally expressed their intention to sign on 7th June 2017.
So far only 84 out of over 202 tax jurisdiction have joined BEPS Convention. The United States & Brazil continue to shun MLI. The 84 signatories cover over 1,400 bilateral tax treaties, which is 41.17% of total 3400 treaties signed by all tax jurisdictions.
The bilateral treaties specified in ratification instruments would be subjected to match-making, fast-track amendments through MLI toolkit. All 1400 treaties would actually come under MLI cover only when 69 out of 84 signatories submit their ratification/approval to Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
This may take years as certain countries would have to take approval from their respective Parliament. Each signatory submits its instrument of ratification with many reservations about different articles of 49-page MLIs convention.
Reservations from all signatories can be perceived as thousands of pinpricks in BEPS umbrella. The word ‘Reservation’ appears 105 times in the text of the Convention.
Lakhs of Rail Track Deaths Should Trigger Safety Reforms
- Published on 27 October 2018
(A slide from Rail Safety Presentation. Image Courtesy: RDSO)
“Could there have been an auditory distraction on approach to the signal”?
“Was there anything related to the cab environment that could have distracted the loco pilot”?
“Is there evidence that the loco pilot was distracted by any in cab activity, such as reading a document...”?
These are three questions out of the 57 standard questions that form part of any departmental inquiry into any accident due to signal passing at danger (SPAD).
Such questions would get rephrased if Modi Government orders an independent probe into Amritsar tragedy in which a speeding train mowed down 62 persons. The victims were watching effigies burning & fireworks at Dussehra ground adjoining railway lines.
In this instant case, a few relevant issues that must be answered to public are:
Were loco pilots distracted by light and noise of Dussehra festivities? Was Vigilance Control Device (VCD) functioning or was it deactivated by loco pilots?
VCD records actions of loco pilots and alerts them for their deviant behavior.
VCD can automatically apply emergency brakes, if pilots ignore its warnings. A passenger train moving at speed of 100 Kilometres/hour requires emergency braking distance of 750 metres.
PMJAY Symbolizes ModiJi’s Magic of Disruptive Development
- Published on 07 October 2018
Dr. Manmohan Singh and P Chidambaram “destroyed” the country with their “intelligence and bookish knowledge”, stated Narendra Modi on 30th November 2013 at a political rally in Delhi.
After becoming Prime Minister, Mr. Modi has been undoing the so-called destruction with clinical disruption. Free from disadvantage of bookish knowledge, he has used his political pragmatism to peddle hard his model of disruptive development.
He, for instance, rocked the economy in 2016 through demonetization. He has transformed goods and service tax (GST) into a forms-filling, burdensome tax, which shows no signs of stabilization.
He pushed Aadhar from a mere identity for delivery of welfare benefits to the poor citizens into a big-brother tool to monitor almost everything and anything citizens do. No wonder, the Supreme Court had to rein in his Aadhar web’s intrusion into privacy domain.
NDA Government’s obsession to link one identity number with another one has created ripples of disruption. A case in point is several entities deducting income tax at source (TDS) from the Railways’ income. Mind you, Railways is a Government Department. And Government does not pay income tax.
From British Raj to Swaraj, Garbage Woes Inundate India
- Published on 22 September 2018
(:Landfill Stink Measurement. Iimage Courtesy: CPCB)
"Insufficiency of dustbins tends to encourage the common practice of throwing litter and rubbish from upper windows on to the paved back spaces below and to intensify the lack of sanitation. Even in the sewered aeras, sewage stagnates as a result of blockage of drains and traps with refuse, and the areas at the backs of the lodging-houses seems be seldom clean. The conditions which prevail indicate the need for more stringent municipal administration”.
Anyone might wrongly take this as ‘mohalla negative news’ played up by Modi critics to spoil the ongoing social media-empowered Swachhta Hi Seva (SHS) campaign.
The fact is that the Quote is from the 1931 report of Royal Labour Commission (RLC). And the description relates to Rangoon (now Yangon), which was then part of British India.
What RLC said about the rot bedeviling Indian cities is far more relevant and alarming than what it was in 1930s. British India’s concern over the insanitary conditions is documented in other such reports and laws too as we would find later in this column.
Anyone, with an iota of respect for facts, can drive through any city and any village to find that official claims on Swachhta are a mere puff. Millions of corridors are splashed with paan spits. Countless window slabs and similar structures are littered with broken glasses and construction materials even in decent apartment buildings.
And the monumental proof of sanitation crisis is Delhi’s world-famous Ghazipur waste dump. It spans over 70 acres with maximum height of 62 metres. In November 2017, East Delhi Municipal Corporation sought expression of interest from specialized agencies to cope with fires that erupt at this landfill.
Delhi’s two other such dumps are also a disgrace. North Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) has minced no words in articulating garbage crisis.