VOX POPULI
by
Aam Admi
Issue: 149
Date: 26.01.2013
Contents:
1.
1. Nitin Gadkari Never Learns
2. 2. Rape: Justice A S Verma Report Welcome But The Journey On This Is Long & Hard
3. 3. Middle Class The 'Chewing' Class
4. 4. Sushma Swaraj - Arun Jaitley Combination For 2014
5. 5. With Rahul In Charge, Akin To The Congress Throwing In The Towel for 2014
Nitin Gadkari Never Learns
Nitin Gadkari should have resigned a long time back. Instead of reading the writing on the wall at the time when the issue of shell Cos. financing his Purti industrial group had come up, he ended up causing embarassment to the BJP in the public mind in the interim, escalated the one-upmanship situation with the RSS and polarised the BJP into camps unnecessarily though it cannot be said that there were no schisms within the BJP earlier. All this for wanting a 2nd term as the party President. One has to also now ask what Gurumurthy's 'clean chit' meant when he was given the task of verifying Gadkari's and the Purti group's funding methods. Even after all this Nitin Gadkari does not seem to have learnt his lesson since he went back to Nagpur and started to threaten the IT authorities who have launched an investigation into the funding of his Purti group. This reflects the problem that we have in this country, in the sense that the politicians expect all the authorities be it the police or IT or whatever to kow-tow to their whims and fancies.
Rape: Justice A S Verma Report Welcome But The Journey On This Is Long & Hard
The Justice A S Verma report on rape and how to handle it within our criminal code is welcome. But the issue is that it should be implemented and quickly. The normal method of dousing burning issues with committee reports claiming that action was taken but never carried through to its ultimate conclusion has been the pattern in India. The Verma Committee report should not meet the same fate. The problem has been that any measure that we propose is brought about as a reactive measure and then we recount all the normal and routine things that are required to be done. Were these measures not existing or at least the most important ones among them and if so why were these not implemented? That is where the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Altamas Kabir had said in the context of rape cases that the laws prevailing are satisfactory but they need to be followed. The basic issue behind this statement has been echoed by Justice Verma at the time of presenting his report when he said that the response by government departments, agencies and the police to appear before the Committee and send in suggestions was dismal. This applied to the National Commission for Women as well. Thus where the authorities are reluctant there will be no improvement in the ability to prevent rape, improve detection and convict rape offenders. After the Delhi rape case there have been a spate of rape cases that have been coming out in the newspapers which are similar to the Delhi offence. This could be because the media seeing public interest in these stories may have shifted these cases from the back pages to the more prominent places to attract their readers. But the fact remains after the public outpouring of anguish and sentiment after the Delhi rape case in the capital and across India nothing has changed as far as reducing the incidence and/or the bestiality of rape. The problem is very deep-rooted and will require an attitudinal change among our men that all women are fair game to their lust which can only happen over generations. In the meanwhile we need to protect our women by simple and easy methods. Thus additional security by wearing alarm watches or CCTV at work places and elsewhere is akin to the Pondicherry Minister suggesting a burkha equivalent for all girls. This is a common-sense approach and the least costly and the easiest to implement as long as it is acceptable. All these other technology measures are a passing fancy since over time as we have seen in India none of them will work and the money spent on these devices/equipment is all going to be wasted and the only persons who will benefit will be the politically connected suppliers of the equipment who would have made money at the people's cost. The other thing related to the lethargy of our police to respond to rape cases is probably the reason why the rapists are getting bolder and increasing their attacks on women, knowing full well that if at all they get caught they would in any case bribe their way out. The statements by the RSS bigwigs and other religious leaders that rape is more an urban phenomena and because of Western culture is disappointing since the problem in our society is of rape and not where it happens and these leaders should not try to colour this by playing blame-games. Rape happens with similar regularity in both rural and urban settings. While in rural areas many cases go unreported in urban areas because of more proximate police machinery more rape cases come to light. Also like if one analyses the profile of rapists in urban areas you will find that these are 90% of the time people from rural areas who have migrated to the cities. Thus in most rape cases it is the education level of the rapist and his ability to conceive respect for the female gender other than his mother and near relations which leads to such incidents. Rape as a mind-set has to be eliminated which will take time but we have to be at it.
Middle Class The 'Chewing' Class
We need to change the terminology of the middle class to 'chewing' class. The reason for this is that though the political class seeks its support at the time of elections both sides of the political spectrum once thay are in the seat of government use the 'chewing' class to bite upon and extract the last drop of blood by squeezing it. The 'chewing' class is considered akin to the filling of the sandwich with the top and the bottom layers of bread representing the rich and poor class. The rich and the poor are the privileged class since the first gets concessions from our financial institutions in terms of borrowing money while the latter is given subsidies and various schemes to alleviate their poverty. This is no case a complaint against the social support schemes given to the poor. But the filling which normally is the most enticing part of the sandwich is what people given the choice would like to finish first. This is exactly the position of the 'chewing' class. Consider the statement of Yashwant Sinha of the BJP and the likely contender for the Finance Minister (FM)'s chair if the BJP alliance make it past the post in the 2014 hustings, who recently said that the tax on the super rich will not work and it is better that the middle class be targeted. During his last innings as FM he had shown similar tendencies for which he had to be replaced by Jaswant Singh. In Sinha's statement the positioning of the super rich was indexed at those with a declared income of Rs. 22 lakh per annum which was also the level positioned by the Finance Ministry in similar statements. This level has to be scaled up since 1 in 5 of our software community has this kind of income. The super rich should be those with an income of Rs. 50 lakh and above per annum and who should be taxed at not less than 40%. The fear of the policy makers for imposing higher rates of tax seems to be avoidance which is baseless since the enforcement machinery should be geared up to ensure compliance since those with income of Rs. 50 lakh and above are also very visible. In contrast the tax authorities want to attack the 'chewing' class considering that this category gives a larger compliance ratio and has the larger numbers. Thus it is like punishing the category which gives you the best behaviour. On the other side of the political spectrum, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, being categorised as political considering he is a staunch supporter of whatever financial measure that the UPA government puts out, has said that the de-regulation of diesel and the proposed increase of its price over the next year or so to compensate for under-recoveries will not fuel inflation since by paying for the higher price of diesel the common man will not have anything left to spend on other items thus negating inflation! One cannot understand really this kind of Sardarji logic, since is Montek proposing that we have stagflation leading the way to a recession. Very irresponsible, if that was his intention, one must say. The simple thing in relation to diesel pricing is that de-regulation as a long-term measure is welcome but diesel which oils the wheels of the economy particularly in transportation will lead to increased prices all around contributing to inflation. It is understood that by stopping under-recoveries the government will save the subsidies being given now to the OMC's and thus be able to reduce the fiscal deficit. But then the problem is the same whether the end consumer pays or the government pays to the OMC's for the under-recoveries on diesel and any responsible and well-meaning government should take the responsibility upon itself rather than distribute it among its citizens. The government should realise that the problem is not going to be any smaller or it will not go away by distributing it over a larger base of people, essentially the 'chewing' class. That is why one is forced to say that only God in his mercy can help the 'chewing' class in this country called India or Bharat, call it what you will. Postscript: It has been reported more by the financial consultants who represent HNI’s that as far as IT compliance is concerned there is more of it among those with annual income above Rs. 20 Lakhs than among the middle class and therefore the ‘super-rich’ need not be further burdened with more tax. The easier alternative as proposed is that the tax-net among middle class should be widened and that compliance here increased. There is no dispute on this as long as the middle-class are not burdened with more tax. This approach seems to be what the Finance Minister is likely to take in the upcoming Budget where he has been talking of increasing the number of tax-saving instruments for tax payers and hiking the amount of tax that can be saved through these measures. At the same time the FM is not unwilling to raise taxes by way of surcharges on the super-rich who can ‘afford to pay more’ tax. Increasing tax-saving through specific instruments as above is being primarily considered to stop the expanding use of gold as an investment option by most Indians which has led to increased imports of gold figuring at levels of US$38 Billion on just one item alone in the last fiscal. Hence the government had recently announced the increase of import duty on gold to 6%. This is again a knee-jerk measure which has been criticized since this will lead to smuggling of gold giving an impetus to the underworld activity particularly in Mumbai and with the sea route being preferred for smuggling, we will have put the seal of approval indirectly on increasing terror activities within the country. The hike in import duty of gold now is part of the mind-set of this government to get unpleasant things or those likely to create a public backlash out of the way like the passenger rail fares, diesel de-regulation etc. before the Budgets. Then the road will be cleared for populist Budgets common enough before any ensuing General Elections like this year.
Sushma Swaraj - Arun Jaitley Combination For 2014
The BJP as a political party is making one gaffe after another. With Nitin Gadkari not coming clean or cleared on the funding process of the various Cos. in his industrial group, accepting the RSS diktat of giving him a 2nd term as the BJP President is nothing short of committing political suicide by the party. L K Advani for once is correct in disputing the second term for Nitin Gadkari. Somewhat nostalgically the BJP has been talking of the Vajpayee - Advani combination being revived with newer actors. This is absolutely the correct approach and should be given to Sushma Swaraj as the PM candiadate for 2014 and having Arun Jaitley as the party president. This duo can revive the magic of the BJP again as long as they sink their differences and agree to work together. As for the Narendra Modi - Nitin Gadkari being positioned as the lead pair for the vanguard in the BJP's challenge for the 2014 elections, unfortunately both are tainted. Modi for the communal riots post-Godhra and however much you harp on development, India would rather forsake it if genocide is what comes with it. And Gadkari as mentioned above cannot be considered until he is absolved of the accusations against him. Thus the BJP should go it alone and ignore the heavy hand of RSS on its shoulder for once.
With Rahul In Charge, Akin To The Congress Throwing In The Towel for 2014
The Congress at the Jaipur chintan shivir have realised that the road to and through the next sweepstakes i.e. general elections is not necessarily strewn with roses. This can be made out from the statements of Jairam Ramesh who said that it will be difficult for the Congress to win a majority on its own. Though this fact is well-known, to come out from senior functionaries is indicative that this premise is cast in concrete and the Congress party is working around this constraint. Not only that but actively seeking partners among the political parties to fight the elections is a very definite agenda item at this ongoing brainstorming session. Added to this is the comment made by Kamal Nath that there exists a clear disconnect between political parties (read Congress) and the urban people and Sonia Gandhi also saying that the Congress cannot afford to have the middle class alienated from it. But the final stamp that the Congress party has put on its defeat in the next general elections is by making Rahul Gandhi, the Vice President and 2nd in command of the party and maybe the Prime Ministerial candidate post-2014 elections. He has been a loser as we have seen in the Bihar and the UP Assembly elections where with him spearheading the campaign the Congress fared worse than in the previous outings and in UP particularly was almost decimated by the SP wave. Not only that wherever he has also campaigned in elections held around the country there has not been much difference in the electoral fortunes of the Congress party candidates. Additionally just like Rajiv Gandhi he is a diffident starter more akin to bringing the unwilling ass to the water trough to take its fill of water considering the difficult and onerous task ahead, which will not help either him or the Congress to sway the electoral maths.
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