Skip to main content

Taxes and Rules


“There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him,” said Robert A. Heinlein. All governments have taxed their citizens for everything from the needle in the haystack to the breasts that grew in the due course on a woman. I'm not exaggerating. India taxes sewing needles. The princely state of Travancore taxed the low caste women if they wanted to cover their breasts. 

If you want to buy a vehicle in India today, you'll end up paying more money than the price of the vehicle in the form of various taxes and fees. There's a tax on the vehicle (the highest slab in the country), on your use of the roads (which were constructed with your tax money in the first place), on insurance of all imaginable sorts, on your license, and what not. 

You pay all that and more, but the roads will continue to gape at you with their potholes that can kill you. Everything in this country seems to be designed to kill the citizens. But the government claims that it is looking after your welfare. Wow! That's great, isn't it? You have a government that cares so much about your welfare.

Now the government has multiplied by ten the fines for breaking certain traffic rules. You don't use a helmet while riding your bike. Okay, don't use, but pay Rs 1000 to the government. That's how the government cares for you. Your bike nosedives into one of those goddamn potholes and kills you. Well, the government has ensured that your insurance will take care of your postmortem and funeral expenditures. Of course, your corpse will get the amount after a deduction of Rs 1000 because you were not wearing the stipulated helmet. 

Some of these new rules are needed, of course. Too many children drive these days and hence regulations are required on that. There's much drunken driving and the fines are needed. It's a different matter that if you are a VIP like Sriram Venkitaraman you can get away with not only drunken driving but also murderous driving. That's India. The rules are for the common folks. The taxes too. 

I don't think that the hefty new fines are going to make India's roads any safer. What India needs is a culture that respects existing rules. What India needs is a culture that respects people. 

PS. Written for Indispire Edition 292 #trafficrules

I am taking my blog to the next level with Blogchatter’s #MyFriendAlexa


https://www.amazon.in/Gods-Love-Song-Tomichan-Matheikal-ebook/dp/B07WDYCK1T/ref=sr_1_2?crid=1O83XJY7TRMJB
Click the link to download my book 'God's Love Song' - absolutely free just for a day.

Comments

  1. I agree, we need a culture that respects rules and people.
    Hopefully long and harsh arm of the law will instill that culture, slowly but surely, among all of us.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I was punished left and right for anything and everything when i was young. I became a rebel. Punishment doesn't create a culture. Especially when the ruler is a known criminal.

      We need a good leader.

      Delete
  2. The more the amount of tax, the happier the traffic police would be!

    Very disgusting to learn about the tax on lower caste women! Thanks for throwing light on that too, sir.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The government is discovering new ways for filling the coffers. Imagine someone being fined an amount that's higher than the price of his bike!

      Delete
  3. Unbridled sarcasm... I guess, you may have reasons for this tone. Most of us will have a similar opinion. However, everything today is caught between rights and duties... though as a responsible citizen, I believe the hefty penalties will also, in the long term, ensure excellence in services.

    ReplyDelete
  4. well i am not fully agreed with you . It's we Indian who doesn't care about rules and regulation that is why we had the most accidental cases in a year through out the world .

    corruption is different thing but it was needed

    one will only understand when they loose someone coz' of these stupid fellows who doesn't care about road rules.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I agree with you. Indians must change their mind-set for there to be any lasting, progressive change. Well-written post.
    Noor Anand Chawla

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Prelude to AtoZ

  From Garden of 5 Senses, Delhi [file pic] Hindsight gives an unearthly charm and order to the past. There can be pain too. A lot of things could have been different, much better, if only we possessed the wisdom of our old age back in those days. As a writer put it, Oedipus, Hamlet, Lear and a lot of those guys must have thought, “I wish I had known this some time ago.” Life is a series of errors with intermittent achievements. The only usefulness of the errors may be the lessons they teach us. Probably, that is their purpose too. We are created to err so that we learn, I dare to put it that way. I turn 64 in a month’s time. It’s not inappropriate to look back at some of the people whom life brought into my life so that I would learn certain lessons. No, I don’t mean to say that life has any such purpose or design or anything. Life is absurd. People come into your life as haphazardly as vehicles ply on your road or birds poop on your head. Some of these people change the chemist

Why I won’t vote

From Deshabhimani , Malayalam weekly Exactly a month from today is the Parliamentary election in my state of Kerala. This time, I’m not going to vote. Bernard Shaw defined democracy , with his characteristic cynicism, as “ a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve .” We elect our government in a democracy. And the government invariably sucks our blood – whichever the party is. The BJP and the Congress are like Tweedledum and Tweedledee though the former makes all sorts of other claims day in and day out. BJP = Congress + the holy cow. The holy cow has turned out to be quite a vampire and that makes a difference, no doubt. In our Prime Minister’s algebra, it is: (a+b) 2 which should be equal to a 2 and b 2 . There is an extra 2ab which is the holy cow. In George Orwell’s Animal Farm , the animals revolt against the human master and set up their own nationalist republic. Soon politics develops in the republic and some pigs become leaders. The porcine

How Arvind Kejriwal can save himself

Narendra Modi and Amit Shah have a clear vision. Eliminate all opposition. Decimate them or absorb them. My previous post [link below] showed a few people decimated by them. Today let’s look at the others: those who are saved by joining the Bharatiya Janata Party [BJP]. 1. Himanta Biswa Sarma  This guy was in Congress and faced serious charges related to the multi-crore Saradha chit fund scam. He also faced corruption charges related to drinking water supply in Guwahati. His house was raided by the Central Bureau of Investigation [CBI]. Then he switched over to BJP and all his crimes just vanished. It’s as simple as taking a dip in the Ganga and all your sins are forgiven. Today he is the chief minister of Assam. Nothing is heard of all the charges that were levelled against him. 2. Amarinder Singh  This former Captain in the Indian Army was a Congressman until Modi’s Enforcement Directorate [ED] started raiding him, his son and his son-in-law. He put an end to all those raid

The Good Old World

Book Review Title: Dukhi Dadiba and irony of fate Author: Dadi Edulji Taraporewala Translators: Aban Mukherji and Tulsi Vatsal Publisher: Ratna Books, Delhi, 2023 Pages: 314 If you want to return to the good old days of the late 19 th century, this is an ideal novel for you. This was published originally in Gujarati in 1913. It appeared as a serial before that from 1898 onwards in a periodical. The conflict between good and evil is the dominant motif though there is romance, betrayal, disappointment, regret, and pretty much of traditional morality. Reading this novel is quite like watching an old Bollywood movie, 1960s style. Ardeshir Bahadurshah, a wealthy Parsi aristocrat in Surat, dies having obligated his son Jehangir to find out his long-lost brother Rustom. Rustom was Bahadurshah’s son in his first marriage. The mother died when the boy was too small and the nurse who looked after the child vanished with it one day. Ratanmai, Bahadurshah’s present wife, takes her

Kejriwal’s Arrest in Modi’s Kurukshetra

For some mysterious reason, Arvind Kejriwal’s arrest reminded me of Haren Pandya. Maybe, because Pandya’s 21 st death anniversary is approaching (26 March). Have you forgotten Haren Pandya? He was the Home Minister of Gujarat before Narendra Modi assumed dictatorial powers in that state. Modi chose to teach humility to Pandya by making him the Minister of State for revenue. Pandya chose not to learn humility from Modi and resigned from that post in Aug 2002. Remember Gujarat of 2002? You should. A fire engulfed a train on 27 Feb 2002 killing 58 Hindu pilgrims who were returning from Ayodhya where they had gone to discover their god, not very unlike Christopher Columbus undertaking a voyage to discover India and messing it all up. What caused the fire in the train? Lord Ram knows probably. The upshot was that there was a riot in Gujarat by Hindus against Muslims. Haren Pandya is one of the BJP leaders who gave statements in many places indicting Modi for the riots. He asser