No one can harm you but yourself

Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, Jawaharlal Nehru and Gandhiji

The best advice I ever had came from one of the greatest souls the world has ever known -- Mahatma Gandhi -- on a sunny afternoon a decade ago.

Most people pass through a period of anguish when their belief in humanity is at a low ebb. I was in such a period. My husband had recently died. My deep sorrow over his loss was followed by the humiliating realization that in the eyes of Indian law I had no individual existence. Along with other Indian women I had participated for years with men in the national struggle for freedom, working and suffering side by side with them until it had finally been achieved-yet in law we women were still recognized only through our relationship to men. Now as a widow without a son, I was not entitled to any share of the family property, nor were my two daughters. I resented this galling position. I was bitter towards those members of my family who supported this antiquated law.

At this time I went to pay my respect to Gandhiji and say goodbye before leaving for America to take part in a conference. After our talk he asked, "Have you made your peace with your relatives?"

I was amazed that he would takes sides against me. "I have not quarrelled with anyone," I replied, "but I refuse to have anything to do with those who take advantage of an outworn law to create a difficult and humiliating situation for me."

Gandhiji looked out of the window for a moment. Then he turned to me and smiled, and said, "You will go and say goodbye because courtesy and decency demand this. In India, we still attach importance to these things."

"No," I declared, "not even to please you will I go to those who wish to harm me."

"No one can harm you except yourself," he said, still smiling. "I see enough bitterness in your heart to cause you injury unless you check it."

I remained silent, and he continued: "You are going to a new country because you are unhappy and want to escape. Can you escape from yourself? Will you find happiness outside when there is bitterness in your heart? Think it over. Be a little humble. You have lost a loved one-that is sorrow enough. Must you inflict further injury on yourself because you lack courage to cleanse your own heart?"

His words would not leave me. They gave me no peace. After some days of severe struggle with myself, I finally telephoned my brother-in-law. I would like to see him and the family, I said, before leaving.

I hadn't been with them five minutes before I sensed that my visit had brought a feeling of relief to everyone. I told them of my plans and asked for their good wishes before starting on this new stage of my life. The effect on me was miraculous. I felt as if a great burden had been lifted and I was free to be myself.

This small gesture was the beginning of a significant change in me. A year and a half later I was in New York, leader of the Indian delegation to the United Nations. Important to us was India's complaint regarding the treatment of people of Indian origin in the Union of South Africa. Harsh things were said by both sides. I resented the manner in which my opponents made personal attacks harmful to India's prestige and to mine. I struck back with the same sharp weapons. Then, after a distressing duel of words, I suddenly thought of Gandhiji. Would he approve? To him, means were as important as the end -- in the long run, perhaps more important. What if we succeeded in getting our resolution passed by questionable tactics that injured our self-respect?

Before going to bed that night I resolved that, come what may, no word of mine would be lightly used in the UN. From then on, I lifted the debate back to where it belonged, refusing to retaliate to personal attacks or to score a cheap point. Our opponents met us on the new level and from then on we argued the case on its merits.

Before leaving the committee room on the last day, I went up and spoke to the leader of the opposing delegation. "I have come to ask you to forgive me if I have hurt you by any word or action in this debate."

He shook my hand warmly and said, "I have no complaint."

It was good to feel right with him, but even better to feel right with myself. 

To retain a sense of proportion is as important as being able to keep one's heart free from hatred. For all of us, no matter what our work, the advice Gandhiji gave me is meaningful: "No one can harm you but yourself."

______________________________________________________________________
Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, Jawaharlal Nehru's sister, wrote this article in 1955 when she was the Indian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom. She passed away in 1990.
This story first appeared in January 1956

GST Blues ... World Bank update

World Bank’s update on India GST are worth pondering.

• The unified Goods and Services Tax (GST), which subsumed a web of central and state levies to make life easier for businesses, is one of the most complex and has the second highest rate in the world.
• As many as 49 countries around the world have a single slab of GST, while 28 countries use two slabs, and only 5 countries, Italy, Luxemborg, Pakistan and Ghana and India, use four non-zero slabs. 
• Indian GST’s top slab of 28% is the second highest of the 115 countries in the world.
• Separately, gold is taxed at 3% rate, precious stones at 0.25%, while alcohol, petroleum products, stamp duties on real estate and electricity duties are excluded from the GST and continue to be taxed by the central and state governments.
• India’s landmark tax reform was off to a chaotic start in July 2017.
• The tax overhaul brought along some teething issues and disruptions. Dealers stocked up on inventory and reduced production, pulling down growth to a three-year low. 
• Disruptions are due to lack of clarity on discontinuation of local taxes; demands for exemptions or lower tax rate; and on account of coping mechanisms to preserve revenue collections.
• Revenue collections have taken a hit. India missed its fiscal deficit target this year.
• India’s threshold for GST registration is also the highest. Businesses with an annual turnover of Rs 1.5 crore fall under the GST regime and are eligible to get input tax credit. 
• Those with annual sales below that and over Rs 20 lakh are allowed to pay a flat tax rate of 1% but can’t charge GST on sales or recieve tax credits. That’s mainly to ease the cost of compliance for small businesses.
• GST resulted in increased administrative tax compliance burden on firms and locking up of working capital due to slow tax refunds.
• High compliance costs are also arising due to prevalence of multiple tax rates implies a need to classify inputs and outputs based on the applicable tax rate.
• While teething problems on the administrative and design sides persist, the introduction of GST should be considered as the start of a process, not the end. The economy is adapting to the new system. 
• International experience suggests that the adjustment process can affect economic activity for several months, the benefits of the GST are likely to outweigh its costs in the long run.
• The key to GST’s success would be a policy design that minimises compliance burden by reducing the number of different rates, limiting exemptions and simplifying laws and procedures. A communication campaign is crucial to convey the various aspects of the new tax regime to businesses.

Read the source article

Implementing the GST will only boost the competitiveness of manufacturing, trading and services sector engaged in selling goods & services throughout the country by economizing logistic delays, warehousing facilities and streamlining tax payment systems. The report is silent on size of country and its business net work, complexity of demography and support of political opponents to government body. The informal sector with single or family run shops & services with razor thin margins, high working capital costs they find GST compliance costs unaffordable. Today, the reality is small traders collect GST from consumers they neither pay the same to Govt nor file returns. They are spread across the country and impossible for forcing them to comply with corrupt taxmen. Those who were VAT payers in the past have cancelled their GST registrations. Every importer understates invoice prices and quantities especially from China. There is nothing which can't be bought for cash without receipt. This a big hole in GST collections and centre simply stares at this leakage and loss.

Modi insult Advani, a national shame

Prime Minister Narendra Modi was in Tripura on Friday March 09, 2018 to take part in the oath-taking ceremony of Biplab Deb, who was has been sworn as the state's new chief minister. Narendra Modi and several other senior BJP leaders including LK Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, party president Amit Shah had participated in the swearing-in ceremony of Biplab Deb as Tripura Chief Minister. As greeted by everyone on the stage, PM Modi responded to them individually. However, when LK Advani greeted him, PM Modi snubbed him without responding to his greetings. The video of Modi snubbing Advani has received flak from netizens who rebuked Modi's head-strong attitude. Many Twitterati recalled how Modi had traveled with Advani as his assistant carrying Advani's microphone.

• Had Modi intended to really insult and humiliate LKAdvani, he would not have invited him in the first place.
• It was Advani who made Modi, not even an MLA, chief minister of Gujarat. How Modi manipulated Advani to pull down Keshubhai Patel is all together a different story.
• BJP won only two Lok Sabha seats in the elections of 1984, in the aftermath of assassination of Indira Gandhi in 1983 and in the resultant sympathy wave BJP was washed away. 
• It was Advani's Rath Yatra of 1990 that helped BJP win 120 seats in 1991 general elections. Later in 1996 elections BJP won 161 seats and in 1998 midterm elections it won 182 seats to form NDA govt headed by AB Vajpayee.

• Riding on the popularity after Rath Yatra, in 1996 he could have got chance to become PM but he got his senior Vajpayee's name for leadership. He was rightful claimant for the position for building the party but gave up. Vajpayee was only a face of the party, Advani was brain and real organisation man.
• In 2002, when PM AB Vajpayee had prepared the ground for removal of Modi, seen as presiding over the worst communal riots the country, it was Advani who saved the day for Modi. Vajpayee, who had asserted that Modi should adhere to “raj dharma”, bowed to Advani's pressure.

It is clear the future of all parties lies temporarily in coalitions. Coalitions demand consensus, adjustments, the fine art of political management and statesmanship. It is clear that Mr. Modi is not a carrier of such values. It is also clear that the BJP is a graceless party.

Once you get past charm, good looks, intelligence and sense of humour, 

it is modesty that stands out.

Culture of a person, society or the country
is the way they treat their women, disabled, aged and weaker sections.

Pranaam ka parinaam Aashirwaad ... Mahabharat

Modi insults Advani at BJP CM swearing in ceremony at Agartala 

It is a matter of national shame that our prime minister, Narendra Modi, is a manner less and culture less person who insults 90 year old man, LK Advani, who was also Modi's mentor and protector until yesterday on a public platform at Agartala. India's future is unsafe in the hands of this culture-less and ill educated person thy name Narendra Modi.

Yes, I am changing

Beware the Broken Window Fallacy

https://fee.org/articles/beware-the-broken-window-fallacy/

How BJP won in Tripura?

In an interview in early January, when asked if the BJP could challenge and replace the CPM in Tripura, the state’s longest serving chief minister, Manik Sarkar, laughed. “Challenge? Replace? You go and ask the people. And you will know the answer.” On March 3, 2018, the people of Tripura answered, bringing to an end 25 years of uninterrupted CPM rule in the state and the 20-year-old reign of Sarkar.

Government employees were unhappy because they were still on fourth pay commission salaries. The BJP promised them a hike, committing to implement the Seventh Pay Commission and that worked overwhelmingly in the BJP’s favour. Young students were unhappy because they felt Tripura was missing out on modernity and jobs or because they felt the CPM cadre were getting all the jobs that were available. The BJP presented itself an alternative which would bring vikas (development).

"Chief Minister Manik Sarkar can’t use use a smart phone. He refused to meet CEOs of top IT companies that we mobilised during the 2015 Tripura conclave just before Agartala became India's third gateway", says Saumen Sarkar, Vice President, Bank of America (IT solutions), who hails from Tripura. Sarkar organised the one-day brainstorming session, that is, the Tripura Conclave, and his efforts to mobilise several top IT majors went to waste when the state government did not play ball.

Sarkar’s biggest asset was his clean image and projection of austerity which didn't help in this elections. For Sarkar it has been a cruel good-bye, for the state has shifted to his most bitter ideological rival.

It would be preposterous to treat the results in the recent assembly elections in the three North Eastern states—Nagaland, Meghalaya and Tripura—as a barometer for the Lok Sabha elections 2019 in these states. In Nagaland (12 seats) and Meghalaya (2 seats), the BJP can only hope to be an ally of the winners. Before the results were declared on March 3, 2018, it would have been difficult for many to believe that the BJP would win 12 seats in the staunchly Christian Nagaland. 

• In Tripura BJP won 35 seats, BJP's ally IPFT won 8 seats and CPM 16 seats. Congress lost in all seats.
• Nearly 44 candidates in the BJP list in Tripura were ex-Congressmen. 
• The saffron party inflicted a humiliating defeat on the Left Front which had never faced such a situation even when it had lost power in 1988.
• The fact that the BJP has got a majority on its own means it would not concede to its ally IPFT’s demand for a separate state ‘Twipraland’.
• The 2019 result will therefore depend on how secure the uneasy partnership between the BJP and the Indigenous People’s Front Tripura remains. 
• Poor farmers live in fear of the revival of a tribal insurgency and credit CM Manik Sarkar for tackling it in the last decade.
• The BJP’s clean sweep in Agartala also proves that middle-class Bengalis, fed up with the lack of job creation by previous governments, also voted decisively against the Left.
• The BJP has its eye firmly on the 25 Lok Sabha seats from the north-eastern States and that its ambitions are grounded.
• Manik Sarkar was fighting a grossly unequal fight. On one side was the CM standing alone  with no money backing him, and on the other side was the “world’s largest” party the BJP, with plenty of money power and which is ruling the Centre. When CPM is refusing to have an electoral understanding with the Congress, how can it win against the BJP?
• BJP deployed 52 union ministers in Tripura during the campaign. The aim was to boost confidence of the cadre who were up against arch rivals, Left.
• The role of the RSS is important in this victory. Some senior workers were sent to BJP to work in Tripura since two years. Sunil Deodhar was the incharge of BJP in Tripura. The amounts of money spent by BJP is mind boggling too.
• The Congress’ vote share dropped from 36.5% in 2013 to 1.8% now. The BJP’s vote share rose from 1.5% to 43.0%. CPM vote share dwindled from 48% to 42.7% votes. The sheen of the BJP's spectacular win was at the cost of Congress rather than the Left. The BJP managed to swallow up the entire opposition space rather than making any drastic inroads into the traditional Left vote base.

Unless different parties with varied ideologies chalk out a common programme, they can't seriously and effectively challenge the BJP.

Justice and its delivery

Corruption is hampering the delivery of justice globally. People perceive the judiciary as the second most corrupt public service, after the police. We in India, have been living with less than efficient judicial remedy system. Some reasons are restraint of contempt notice threat, corruption prevailing in courts, incompetent level of delivery pattern of our judiciary and lack of awareness even after 70 years of self rule. 

• A transparent and accountable judiciary to deliver justice for all. The integrity, independence, and impartiality of the judiciary are preconditions for fair and effective access to justice and for the protection of human rights. Discrimination and corrupt practices often prevent citizens, especially the poor and marginalized, from equitable opportunities and protection of their rights.
• More than 75% of the Indians have never visited courts while near 100% have visited doctors  and huge majority have visited schools or temples / churches / mosques and little lesser to colleges and employment offices.
• Vast majority have never tested the efficacy of the judicial system. Our judges and judicial officers are crying for help as the work seems piling and becoming unmanageable, what will then be the case if litigation intensity rises?
• The bitter truth is that our courts are court of law and not a court of justice. Some may disagree because it is the law and order that justice is incidental to. If you get proof beyond reasonable doubt, about your innocence, the court shall provide you with justice.
• To achieve justice, to prove the truth, it takes time. The judge doesn’t know what has happened. He or she has to learn, listen to both sides, and with the corroboration of evidence beyond reasonable doubt, make a decision. Extreme justice is often injustice.
• Even though the power is in the hands of the bench, its members cannot unplug the Constitution.
• The truism, justice delayed is justice denied, is easy to cite. But to be in that chair surrounded by thousands of provisions and arguments, and eyes looking for justice, it is not easy to make decisions that are not just in favour of what is right, but also in the interest of the public at large.
• What if, in haste, an innocent person is punished — it would be the most horrendous crime. Instead, let the crime of the guilty go unpunished, than an innocent person being condemned.
• Our judicial system is so opaque and money centered. Even a simple bail and case settlement is often decided and determined based on the person's capacity in financial terms and political poweress.
• It is not a coincidence that all criminal and politically sensitive cases of those in power are always in the back burner and this happen without fail.

Corruption undermines justice in many parts of the world with the poor and vulnerable suffering most. We need justice delivery system that works round-the-year, speedy and free - like public hospitals. To achieve this the judiciary infrastructure must be modernized and upgraded. Judge-to-people ratio should be increased from the present 18 to at least 50 per million people. With the states failing to spend adequately on providing the required infrastructure and adequate number of trained personnel by way of judges and staff, the judiciary can hardly be blamed from the enormous backlog of cases that has been built up to whopping 28 million pending cases. The justice delivery system failure has led to mafia, musclemen, politicians and policemen settling the disputes and collecting hefty amounts from all the aggrieved parties.