Expired Medicine

Its a cliche that Boy / Girl friends come with an expiry date. Though its an overused term and lost its original effect, it does signify something, if a relationship is not mutual and is not an equal give and take it will plunge and may eventually end.

Though a Government needs to take care of all its subjects equally, there should be special consideration towards working class who pay taxes. This Income tax is in turn one of the prime source of income for Government. Its a concerted relationship where working class and Government benefit from each other.

Coming back to reality from theory, one realises that some of the benefits an Indian worker gets for working in India are wildly unreasonable. These benefits would have worked well in 1960s. One hand we are talking about Make in India, world class technologies, Mangalyaan but our acts are not in sync with our thoughts.

Recently Union Minister, Hon. Arun Jaitley proposed to levy tax on Employer's contribution of Provident Fund, clearly a proposal which wasn't well thought out. His office had to later come up with several iterations and after some violent protests in Bangalore they had to roll back the proposal. People at the age of 58 or 60 should be treated as adults. Instead of touching one of the 'Exempt - Exempt - Exempt' category benefit, if Government's intention is to provide its working class a corpus post retirement it should create opportunities to save more at present times. After all the value of a Rupee today is far greater than a Rupee several years down the line.

Consider House Rent Allowance, a Benefit which has partial tax exemption. In 1960s India would have boasted four major Metro cities and would have been fair to give an exemption of 50% for people residing in Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai and Kolkata. Even after 70 years of Independence if we still have just 4 metro cities it clearly shows the lack of India's glorious growth or the statistics are merely numbers on paper.

Should different cities have different HRA exemption rates?

Consider Bangalore, it levies highest Service Tax, Road Tax in the country. Tenants shell out 10 months of Rent advance. Its population will soon be the highest in the country and people living here are from various parts of the country but still a 'No Metro status'. We are planning to construct smart cities, now should smart cities be given Metro status only Government has to answer.

My high school fee in 2002 was INR 250 per month. It gave some tax relief for my Father. In 2016, the Tax relief on Children's education fee exemption is guess what? INR 200! A Lifetime imprisonment in India ends after 14 years! Even if the exemption is increased from INR 2,400 Per Annum to INR 4,800 Per Annum it will be a relief but it won't aid in savings because the reality is on 50,000th Floor!

Quality vs Compromised education!

These are just two points. There are other ludicrous benefits like LTA, why should someone be restricted to have their holiday within the boundaries of India? These benefits when being offered often leaves us Indians with a feeling that the government is giving its people a dosage of expired medicine which doesn't cure the ailment.

(For starters:

Pratibha Patil Foreign trips

"We are not committing a big crime...don't you send school children on vacation?"  - A response from Karnataka MLA

Study (read as junk) report by Karnataka MLAs )

Or why should dependent status be given to girls till they get married and is on the basis of age for boys? Hello there Deepika!:D 

It's high time we realise that the medicine subscribed to us during the 60's expired long back. Its time we look at a medicine that will revitalise the relationship!

PS: I have written a note to PMO office through http://pgportal.gov.in and Registration Number is PMOPG/E/2016/0174433. I shall update the post if I hear back from the authority.

In case you want to share your ideas / suggestions you can use the following toll free number 1800-11-7800 and record your message for the Prime Minister in either Hindi or English