Live within your means Levy tax, allow exchange
My compliments for the interesting and forthright editorial, “Ballooning state debt” (July 20). The Uttar Pradesh government’s move to waive farmers’ loans to the tune of ~36,000 crore was a disastrous step. One didn’t have to be an economist or an astrologer to predict that this would be followed by a spate of waivers in other states. Punjab and Maharashtra have followed suit and more states are perhaps waiting in the wings.
Loan waiver is akin to one-time firefighting. It can’t solve the problems of farmers. It can’t improve their incomes. Several expert committee reports have prepared blueprints for improving incomes of farmers, but these are just collecting dust.
As states are used to living in heavy debt, there’s hardly any initiative to correct the situation. On the one hand, states seek greater autonomy and a truly federal structure, on the other hand they are yet to learn to live within their means. They are like children, who know their parents will support them irrespective of how unwisely they have frittered away their resources.
There is no point in states preparing Budgets if at the end of the year they run to Delhi with a begging bowl. The central government has acted wisely in the last three years and brought in a lot of fiscal discipline. All this will come to nought if it has to keep doling out money to states.
Krishan Kalra Gurugram able to muster the courage to sack Yadav for fear of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) withdrawing support to his government.
Kumar’s conscience hardly permits him to crawl back to the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) if the RJD withdraws support to the state government in case Yadav is asked to step down.
Neither can the chief minister be comfortable with the United Progressive Alliance because the credibility of the Congress and the RJD has nosedived.
The Bharatiya Janata Party need not woo or mollycoddle Kumar to return to the NDA. At the same time, the NDA should keep its door open for the JD-U if it comes back on its own volition.
K V Seetharamaiah Hassan It is wrong on the part of the government to refuse to open a window for exchanging banned ~500 and ~1,000 notes. The government has said in its affidavit filed before the Supreme Court that such a move would defeat the objective of demonetisation and elimination of black money and that the income tax department would have great difficulty in distinguishing genuine cases from numerous bogus ones.
It is apparent from the affidavit that the government is not ready to acknowledge or honour the commitment that Prime Minister Narendra Modi made in his address to the nation on November 8, 2016. He said scrapped notes could be exchanged till March 31, 2017.
It is also apparent that the government has failed to appreciate the basic concept of jurisprudence — that it is better that 10 culprits go free but no innocent is punished. It is quite possible that there are 25 per cent genuine and 75 per cent doubtful/benami holders of scrapped notes. Why punish the 25 per cent?
Instead of denying an opportunity to the public, the government could consider converting the black money into white, by charging/levying 10-30 per cent tax on the total amount of scrapped notes deposited. This suggestion has nothing to do with last year’s black money disclosure schemes.
R G Nakhate Mumbai