Saturday, May 15, 2010

Contents Page

This page contains links to all the posts so far on this blog. Articles I consider significant have been marked with an asterisk.

Chronological List

2010

Mission Statement

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Friday, May 14, 2010

Mission Statement

Finance and taxation are confusing, in fact so is the whole world of commerce.Let's consider few areas in this field and opinion of common man on it. Ask any common man in the street about the stock market. Likely as not, he will ask you why it is so important for the national economics that whenever it goes down, the Prime minister, the finance minister and intellectuals lose their sleep over it. Why do people invest in the stock market with its highly fluctuating profits and losses, rather than in fixed deposits which gives them a steady return?

The same holds for taxation. The goverment frequently increases the tax slab. This is beneficial to the people, as they have to pay less tax. However, the same government keeps increasing indirect taxes; this increases the price of goods, and thus eats up surplus income. So ultimately, whatever benefits the government gives us through direct tax breaks, it takes away through indirect tax increases! What is the intention behind it? Or the logic?

Visit any village in India, and you will find people asking the same questions: Why, for example, does the government supply rice to the poor people at two Rupees a kilo, and then expect them to buy vegetables for twenty Rupees? Then again, instead of waisting money in providing cheap rice, why isn't the government using the same money to provide cheap and good quality healthcare and educational facilities? Thirdly, is the government even aware that schemes like NREGA coupled with food security schemes are creating huge shortage of labour in the farming sector? Does it plan to overcome this, and if so how? By educating farmers? Through modern technology? Or as it usually does, by choosing to pretend the problem does not exist?

This blog is driven by issues such as those I have outlined here. Here we attempt to analyse from the common man's point of view the different financial policies and programmes of the government.
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