Here and there

Few things on my mind recently.

1. LPG

Now that the Karnataka government is asking its citizens to produce their Ration Card to keep their gas connections. The middle class citizens are up in arms blaming the government for their suffering. ie. they have to stand in long queues. And says that this is all unnecessary.  Wait a min, if you have a legal gas connection, why should  you care? Oh wait, you got your connection by paying 7000 Rs to the clerk without declaring any proofs right? Thats the concern !

Now the question comes, is it really necessary to give subsidized cooking gas to our middle class citizens? If you tell me that its for the poor. I can assure you that more than half of it goes to the middle and upper middle class families.

Lets look at this math. Consider a middle class family of 4. They may need one cylinder a month. They pay around 400 Rs for the cylinder. Savings due to subsidized pricing = 400 (as actual price for a cylinder of cooking gas is around 800) Now every middle class family own a two -wheeler don’t they? They might spent atleast 1000Rs on Petrol every month. But then petrol is taxed twice over, so that government can recover the loss they make on giving subsidized cooking gas. So the family is paying Rs 500 more for the petrol . Loss = 500 Rs.

In short you aren’t gaining anything from the subsidized cooking gas. So shut up.

I  don’t think we have to spend the tax payers money on giving subsidized cooking gas to the middle class.

Note : My kitchen is not government sponsored and the above math can be questioned, revisited and considered wrong.

2. Oh ! The businessmen are corrupt. They don’t pay tax.

So I was having lunch with my colleague the other day and was talking about taxation in general when he said “The business people cheat. They show fake sales, bills and get away. They don’t pay tax legally”

I knew where this was going. He was cribbing about the tax he has to pay and that goverment is eating away his money. (which I have also cribbed about in one  of my older posts).

“How much rent do you pay?” I asked him.

“9000” he said.

“How much HRA do you get” I asked

“13000” he said.

“How much did you declare for tax benefits?” I asked

“13000, otherwise I would lose tax for 4000Rs a month” He said.

“Exactly. ” I said.

He got my point.

We have corruption deep in our  blood. We blame Kalmadi for eating crores. Or discuss about how Priyanka Chopra did not pay tax for 2Cr.

Did we?

A thief is a thief even if steal just Rs100 or Rs 1cr.

3. Education

Schools have entrance examinations these days. Not just to the higher classes but even for  Kindergarten. I was reading through Canada’s educational system the other day. They too have entrance exams. But the only difference is that they don’t use the entrance examination to reject students. But to evaluate them to understand the level of attention they should be giving to each individual student.

Back in school, when we failed for Math or Science, the teachers used to punish us. Cane us or ask us to write the questions and answers 100 times. If I failed in an exam I considered that as my failure. But now I guess its a collective failure. The teacher has also failed!

4.  Points to Ponder.

Okay this is for some of them who has to know few things before they talk about it.

a. No, Christianity did not come to India with the British. They were here much before that. Infact the British was surprised to find a huge Christian population in Southern India.  Its believed (with historical evidence) that St Thomas traveled to India (through the Spice Trade Route)  and converted some people in Kerala to Christianity 2000 Years back.

b. No, India does not have a National Language.

c. No, middle class is not the majority in India.  We try to form the opinion of this country. But we are not the majority.

d. etc

The (d) point is for my first Team Lead (from my first company). You don’t need to add a point to put an et cetera when you list out things in an email, Sir.

Tags: Christianity in India, Education, LPG connection karnataka, National Language India, Tax in India