Skip to main content

In Tax We Trust

Slum and Skyscrapers in Mumbai: by Alicja Dobrucka


A few weeks back, when the World Economic Forum was meeting in Davos, some of the wealthiest people in the world wrote an open letter, titled In tax we trust, to their “fellow millionaires and billionaires.” The letter drew the attention of the affluent people of the world to the gaping chasm between the rich and the poor and squarely laid the blame on the prevailing economic system which “until now has been deliberately designed to make the rich richer.”

The forthrightness of the letter is admirable. The prevailing economic system which makes the rich richer is unjust, the letter admits candidly. “This injustice … has created a colossal lack of trust between the people of the world and the elites who are the architects of this system. Bridging that divide is going to take more than billionaire vanity projects or piecemeal philanthropic gestures – it’s going to take a complete overhaul of a system…”

Let us pay more tax than the less privileged people. That’s what these rich people are saying.

Why did they choose to be so magnanimous. 76% of the world’s total wealth lies in the hands of just 10% of people. The bottom 50% of people own just 2% of the assets. The inequality is all too obvious. The injustice is obvious too. To sensible people.

The Indian billionaires are conspicuously absent from the signatories to that letter. In India, the chasm between the rich and the poor became ever more audacious after Modi became the Prime Minister. 57% of the country’s wealth lies with 10% of the Indians while the share of the bottom 50% has gone down to 13%. India today ranks as a top country with respect to wealth inequality. And the system is being tilted more and more in favour of the rich as indicated by the latest budget.

A small additional tax (say 5%) on the billionaires of India will bring in an enormous sum of money that can be used for specific purposes like education of the poor children, giving them free lunch in schools, ensuring their nutrition and health, and so on. Instead Modi has chosen to give more and more benefits to these rich people and tax the poor more and more by allowing the prices of everything from food to petrol to hit the skies.

The world is moving ahead with a vision to create a more egalitarian global society. But India is moving in the opposite direction by widening the gap between the rich and the poor. Modi has been taking India backward in too many ways. Back towards ancient myths and their static darkness. Modi is doing to India just what Christianity did to Europe in the medieval period. Europe eventually rejected that Christianity. Modi’s Hindutva will become a relic in the due course of time. Modi himself will become a gargoyle on the edifice of civilised human history. It’s changes or pitchforks, to paraphrase the conclusion of the open letter mentioned at the beginning of this post. Listen to history wisely if you don’t want to end up as a gruesome gargoyle there.

Satish Acharya's cartoon on the latest budget

xZx

 

Comments

  1. Chinmayee Gayatree SahuFebruary 6, 2022 at 1:06 PM

    I echo your thoughts, Sir ! And this is what happens when there is no fear of opposition, the civil society is clueless of what to do and the same party becomes overconfident of its majority . Time to change everything.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 6, 2022 at 1:48 PM

      If they don't change themselves, destiny will change them brutally. That's how history works.

      Delete
  2. ArtiFebruary 7, 2022 at 2:00 PM

    Thank you for sharing Satish Acharya's cartoon --a picture paints a thousand words and this one paints the pain of the common man starkly--pitchforks, it is then.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 7, 2022 at 5:58 PM

      What baffles me is how long it will take the common person to understand the treachery...

      Delete

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...
10 comments
Read more

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...
4 comments
Read more

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. ...
10 comments
Read more

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 ...
10 comments
Read more

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...
34 comments
Read more