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

Country where humour died

Humour died a thousand deaths in India after May 2014. The reason – let me put it as someone put it on X.  The stand-up comedian Kunal Kamra called a politician some names like ‘traitor’ which made his audience laugh because they misunderstood it as a joke. Kunal Kamra has to explain the joke now in a court of justice. I hope his judge won’t be caught with crores of rupees of black money in his store room . India itself is the biggest joke now. Our courts of justice are huge jokes. Our universities are. Our temples, our textbooks, even our markets. Let alone our Parliament. I’m studying the Ramayana these days in detail because I’ve joined an A-to-Z blog challenge and my theme is Ramayana, as I wrote already in an earlier post . In order to understand the culture behind Ramayana, I even took the trouble to brush up my little knowledge of Sanskrit by attending a brief course. For proof, here’s part of a lesson in my handwriting.  The last day taught me some subhashit...

Lucifer and some reflections

Let me start with a disclaimer: this is not a review of the Malayalam movie, Lucifer . These are some thoughts that came to my mind as I watched the movie today. However, just to give an idea about the movie: it’s a good entertainer with an engaging plot, Bollywood style settings, superman type violence in which the hero decimates the villains with pomp and show, and a spicy dance that is neatly tucked into the terribly orgasmic climax of the plot. The theme is highly relevant and that is what engaged me more. The role of certain mafia gangs in political governance is a theme that deserves to be examined in a good movie. In the movie, the mafia-politician nexus is busted and, like in our great myths, virtue triumphs over vice. Such a triumph is an artistic requirement. Real life, however, follows the principle of entropy: chaos flourishes with vengeance. Lucifer is the real winner in real life. The title of the movie as well as a final dialogue from the eponymous hero sugg...

Abdullah’s Religion

O Abdulla Renowned Malayalam movie actor Mohanlal recently offered special prayers for Mammootty, another equally renowned actor of Kerala. The ritual was performed at Sabarimala temple, one of the supreme Hindu pilgrimage centres in Kerala. No one in Kerala found anything wrong in Mohanlal, a Hindu, praying for Mammootty, a Muslim, to a Hindu deity. Malayalis were concerned about Mammootty’s wellbeing and were relieved to know that the actor wasn’t suffering from anything as serious as it appeared. Except O Abdulla. Who is this Abdulla? I had never heard of him until he created an unsavoury controversy about a Hindu praying for a Muslim. This man’s Facebook profile describes him as: “Former Professor Islahiaya, Media Critic, Ex-Interpreter of Indian Ambassador, Founder Member MADHYAMAM.” He has 108K followers on FB. As I was reading Malayalam weekly this morning, I came to know that this Abdulla is a former member of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind Kerala , a fundamentalist organisation. ...

Violence and Leaders

The latest issue of India Today magazine studies what it calls India’s Gross Domestic Behaviour (GDB). India is all poised to be an economic superpower. But what about its civic sense? Very poor, that’s what the study has found. Can GDP numbers and infrastructure projects alone determine a country’s development? Obviously, no. Will India be a really ‘developed’ country by 2030 although it may be $7-trillion economy by then? Again, no is the answer. India’s civic behaviour leaves a lot, lot to be desired. Ironically, the brand ambassador state of the country, Uttar Pradesh, is the worst on most parameters: civic behaviour, public safety, gender attitudes, and discrimination of various types. And UP is governed by a monk!  India Today Is there any correlation between the behaviour of a people and the values and principles displayed by their leaders? This is the question that arose in my mind as I read the India Today story. I put the question to ChatGPT. “Yes,” pat came the ...

The Ramayana Chronicles: 26 Stories, Endless Wisdom

I’m participating in the A2Z challenge of Blogchatter this year too. I have been regular with this every April for the last few years. It’s been sheer fun for me as well as a tremendous learning experience. I wrote mostly on books and literature in the past. This year, I wish to dwell on India’s great epic Ramayana for various reasons the prominent of which is the new palatial residence in Ayodhya that our Prime Minister has benignly constructed for a supposedly homeless god. “Our Ram Lalla will no longer reside in a tent,” intoned Modi with his characteristic histrionics. This new residence for Lord Rama has become the largest pilgrimage centre in India, drawing about 100,000 devotees every day. Not even the Taj Mahal, a world wonder, gets so many footfalls. Ayodhya is not what it ever was. Earlier it was a humble temple town that belonged to all. Several temples belonging to different castes made all devotees feel at home. There was a sense of belonging, and a sense of simplici...