✌✌✌✌ THE HINDU ✌✌✌✌
✌✌ Questions from a washout ✌✌
That the winter session would be washed out had been clear for a while. With the Opposition parties mustering all their disruptive tactics to stall the functioning of both Houses, insisting on maximalist demands on just how the debate on demonetisation should be structured, hopes for any substantive work had diminished. In the event, the session also left a hysterical afterglow, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi telling a gathering in Gujarat that he had to speak his mind in a “jan sabha” (people’s meet) as the Opposition wouldn’t let him do so in Parliament; and Rahul Gandhi, vice-president of the Congress party, complaining that he was not allowed to make earth-shattering disclosures on the floor of the House, but then keeping them close to his chest outside. With theatrics such as these, both the Government and the Opposition have left a question hanging in the politically charged air: what was the point? What did either side gain by bringing Indian parliamentary democracy’s most deliberative process to a grinding halt? Just two bills were passed, one of them a money bill that did not need the Rajya Sabha’s nod. According to the think tank PRS Legislative Research, less than 1 per cent of the 330 questions listed for Question Hour in the Rajya Sabha were answered orally. The Lok Sabha looked better only in comparison, with 11 per cent.
Given what was at stake in the session, the abandonment of the spirit of give-and-take that keeps the legislative schedule humming was baffling. The government has staked much political capital on key financial reforms that need cooperation across the aisles. It lost the chance to pass bills critical to the April 1, 2017, deadline for the rollout of the Goods and Services Tax. It also failed to end the session on a note of federal cooperation to set up the shift to Budget day to February 1 from next year. The Opposition, for its part, has clearly taken its cue from the BJP’s playbook. By forcing adjournments while in opposition, it was successful in reinforcing the impression of a policy paralysis in the second UPA government. But the Congress has a point to prove other than what the BJP did then. To re-establish itself as a viable option for voters, the Congress needs to share its vision and road map in the Rahul Gandhi era. The floor of the House, with a tempered debate and questioning as a constructive party of opposition, is a key venue for that. Basic self-interest demands that government and opposition avert the possibility of the Budget session meeting the same fate as this one.
✌✌ Bridging the learning deficit ✌✌
Almost five decades after India first formulated its National Education Policy, the Ministry for Human Resource Development appears to be gearing up for another revision to this policy document, and not a moment too soon. The state of education, particularly in the critical primary and pre-primary years, is far from satisfactory. Since the early 2000s, successive governments kept up momentum on a sustained investment push into schools in a bid to resolve what was viewed as a supply-side problem. As The Hindu’s recent series on primary education, Learning Deficit, highlighted, it was hoped that through this effort children in elementary education would be provided with classrooms, uniforms, textbooks and other teaching materials, and a larger contingent of teachers. Thus, this approach hoped to tackle low enrolment rates. Led by government schools, public investment in education helped raise the gross enrolment ratio from 81.6 per cent of children in the 6-14 age group in 2000 to 96 per cent or more since 2008. Yet it soon became evident that getting children into school was only the first step, especially when gaping holes remained in the system. Among these, the barriers to high-quality, equitably-distributed primary education include: high dropout rates, especially for girls; teacher absenteeism and low teaching quality; and outmoded pedagogies and insufficient resources to implement contemporary teaching methods.
The problem of poor learning outcomes is of particular concern, for it is a structural issue pertaining to the design of curricula and ingrained rote learning methods. These have been the backbone of India’s teaching tradition for over half a century. But will this help create the kind of workforce that India wishes to develop: nimble, highly-skilled and ready for the digital age, the global economy and new pathways of occupational mobility? Or will the sheer weight of an outdated, colonial-era education system make Indians too sluggish and skill-deprived to cope in a highly competitive global arena? While efforts of the present and previous government to boost the quality of learning in higher and vocational education must be appreciated, policymakers ought not to ignore early childhood education and primary schooling, the phases during which the most important cognitive development milestones are attained. The tenth Annual Status of Education Report found that in 2014 the proportion of Class 3 and Class 5 students in rural areas who could read a Class 2 textbook was 23.6 and 48.1 per cent, respectively. Until Activity-Based Learning and “teaching at the right level”, tools for real learning and skill-absorption, become the norm, hopes of the country becoming a great power may well remain a dream.
✌✌✌✌ THE ECONOMIC TIMES ✌✌✌✌
✌✌ GST will work where demonetisation won’t ✌✌
Finance minister Arun Jaitley was spot on when he said, while handing over the Economic Times Awards for Corporate Excellence to the winners of 2016, that changing the mindset that it was smart to not pay one’s taxes is a major challenge before the country. He said demonetisation was meant to address the problem. It might well have been meant to, but will fail in this task, given the alacrity with which Indians have deposited the bulk of the demonetised notes already and given the ease with which old money can be changed for new legal tender in the informal market. However, one other reform that the FM is pursuing with tenacity, the Goods and Services Tax, is likely to play a significant role in making Indians taxcompliant.
GST allows those who pay tax on their supply of goods or services to net out the tax they have paid on their inputs.
In order to claim input tax credit, producers would want to procure their inputs only from suppliers who raise an invoice and levy tax. These suppliers, in turn, would procure their inputs from other suppliers who also pay tax on their output. Once everyone collects tax from those who purchase their supplies, the volume of production that goes outside the tax net would fall appreciably. Once most output gets reported, so would the associated income. Thus, transiting to GST is a reform that would expand the base of both direct and indirect taxes. However, for this potential to be realised, the government must do two other things as well. One is to subsume stamp duty under GST, treating registration as a service rendered for a fee on which service tax is charged. Commercial establishments would then report their true value, so as to maximise the input tax credit by way of tax paid on registration fees. This would benchmark real estate transactions in general.
Another key reform needed is to lower tax rates and raise the income threshold to pay appreciable levels of tax. If the cost of compliance is significantly larger than the cost of non-compliance, people will find ways to evade tax.
✌✌ Questions from a washout ✌✌
That the winter session would be washed out had been clear for a while. With the Opposition parties mustering all their disruptive tactics to stall the functioning of both Houses, insisting on maximalist demands on just how the debate on demonetisation should be structured, hopes for any substantive work had diminished. In the event, the session also left a hysterical afterglow, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi telling a gathering in Gujarat that he had to speak his mind in a “jan sabha” (people’s meet) as the Opposition wouldn’t let him do so in Parliament; and Rahul Gandhi, vice-president of the Congress party, complaining that he was not allowed to make earth-shattering disclosures on the floor of the House, but then keeping them close to his chest outside. With theatrics such as these, both the Government and the Opposition have left a question hanging in the politically charged air: what was the point? What did either side gain by bringing Indian parliamentary democracy’s most deliberative process to a grinding halt? Just two bills were passed, one of them a money bill that did not need the Rajya Sabha’s nod. According to the think tank PRS Legislative Research, less than 1 per cent of the 330 questions listed for Question Hour in the Rajya Sabha were answered orally. The Lok Sabha looked better only in comparison, with 11 per cent.
Given what was at stake in the session, the abandonment of the spirit of give-and-take that keeps the legislative schedule humming was baffling. The government has staked much political capital on key financial reforms that need cooperation across the aisles. It lost the chance to pass bills critical to the April 1, 2017, deadline for the rollout of the Goods and Services Tax. It also failed to end the session on a note of federal cooperation to set up the shift to Budget day to February 1 from next year. The Opposition, for its part, has clearly taken its cue from the BJP’s playbook. By forcing adjournments while in opposition, it was successful in reinforcing the impression of a policy paralysis in the second UPA government. But the Congress has a point to prove other than what the BJP did then. To re-establish itself as a viable option for voters, the Congress needs to share its vision and road map in the Rahul Gandhi era. The floor of the House, with a tempered debate and questioning as a constructive party of opposition, is a key venue for that. Basic self-interest demands that government and opposition avert the possibility of the Budget session meeting the same fate as this one.
✌✌ Bridging the learning deficit ✌✌
Almost five decades after India first formulated its National Education Policy, the Ministry for Human Resource Development appears to be gearing up for another revision to this policy document, and not a moment too soon. The state of education, particularly in the critical primary and pre-primary years, is far from satisfactory. Since the early 2000s, successive governments kept up momentum on a sustained investment push into schools in a bid to resolve what was viewed as a supply-side problem. As The Hindu’s recent series on primary education, Learning Deficit, highlighted, it was hoped that through this effort children in elementary education would be provided with classrooms, uniforms, textbooks and other teaching materials, and a larger contingent of teachers. Thus, this approach hoped to tackle low enrolment rates. Led by government schools, public investment in education helped raise the gross enrolment ratio from 81.6 per cent of children in the 6-14 age group in 2000 to 96 per cent or more since 2008. Yet it soon became evident that getting children into school was only the first step, especially when gaping holes remained in the system. Among these, the barriers to high-quality, equitably-distributed primary education include: high dropout rates, especially for girls; teacher absenteeism and low teaching quality; and outmoded pedagogies and insufficient resources to implement contemporary teaching methods.
The problem of poor learning outcomes is of particular concern, for it is a structural issue pertaining to the design of curricula and ingrained rote learning methods. These have been the backbone of India’s teaching tradition for over half a century. But will this help create the kind of workforce that India wishes to develop: nimble, highly-skilled and ready for the digital age, the global economy and new pathways of occupational mobility? Or will the sheer weight of an outdated, colonial-era education system make Indians too sluggish and skill-deprived to cope in a highly competitive global arena? While efforts of the present and previous government to boost the quality of learning in higher and vocational education must be appreciated, policymakers ought not to ignore early childhood education and primary schooling, the phases during which the most important cognitive development milestones are attained. The tenth Annual Status of Education Report found that in 2014 the proportion of Class 3 and Class 5 students in rural areas who could read a Class 2 textbook was 23.6 and 48.1 per cent, respectively. Until Activity-Based Learning and “teaching at the right level”, tools for real learning and skill-absorption, become the norm, hopes of the country becoming a great power may well remain a dream.
✌✌✌✌ THE ECONOMIC TIMES ✌✌✌✌
✌✌ GST will work where demonetisation won’t ✌✌
Finance minister Arun Jaitley was spot on when he said, while handing over the Economic Times Awards for Corporate Excellence to the winners of 2016, that changing the mindset that it was smart to not pay one’s taxes is a major challenge before the country. He said demonetisation was meant to address the problem. It might well have been meant to, but will fail in this task, given the alacrity with which Indians have deposited the bulk of the demonetised notes already and given the ease with which old money can be changed for new legal tender in the informal market. However, one other reform that the FM is pursuing with tenacity, the Goods and Services Tax, is likely to play a significant role in making Indians taxcompliant.
GST allows those who pay tax on their supply of goods or services to net out the tax they have paid on their inputs.
In order to claim input tax credit, producers would want to procure their inputs only from suppliers who raise an invoice and levy tax. These suppliers, in turn, would procure their inputs from other suppliers who also pay tax on their output. Once everyone collects tax from those who purchase their supplies, the volume of production that goes outside the tax net would fall appreciably. Once most output gets reported, so would the associated income. Thus, transiting to GST is a reform that would expand the base of both direct and indirect taxes. However, for this potential to be realised, the government must do two other things as well. One is to subsume stamp duty under GST, treating registration as a service rendered for a fee on which service tax is charged. Commercial establishments would then report their true value, so as to maximise the input tax credit by way of tax paid on registration fees. This would benchmark real estate transactions in general.
Another key reform needed is to lower tax rates and raise the income threshold to pay appreciable levels of tax. If the cost of compliance is significantly larger than the cost of non-compliance, people will find ways to evade tax.
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