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

Randeep the melody

Many people in this pic have made their presence in this A2Z series A phone call came from an unknown number the other day. “Is it okay to talk to you now, Sir?” The caller asked. The typical start of a conversation by an influencer. “What’s it about?” My usual response looking forward to something like: “I am so-and-so from such-and-such business firm…” And I would cut the call. But there was a surprise this time. “I am Randeep…” I recognised him instantly. His voice rang like a gentle music in my heart. Randeep was a student from the last class 12 batch of Sawan. One of my favourites. He is unforgettable. Both Maggie and I taught him at Sawan where he was a student from class 4 to 12. Nine years in a residential school create deep bonds between people, even between staff and students. Randeep was an ideal student. Good at everything yet very humble and spontaneous. He was a top sportsman and a prefect with eminent leadership. He had certain peculiar problems with academics. Ans
25 comments
Read more

Queen of Religion

She looked like Queen Victoria in the latter’s youth but with a snow-white head. She was slim, fair and graceful. She always smiled but the smile had no life. Someone on the campus described it as a “plastic smile.” She was charming by physical appearance. Soon all of us on the Sawan school campus would realise how deceptive appearances were. Queen took over the administration of Sawan school on behalf of her religious cult RSSB [Radha Soami Satsang Beas]. A lot was said about RSSB in the previous post. Its godman Gurinder Singh Dhillon is now 70 years old. I don’t know whether age has mellowed his lust for land and wealth. Even at the age of 64, he was embroiled in a financial scam that led to the fall of two colossal business enterprises, Fortis Healthcare and Religare finance. That was just a couple of years after he had succeeded in making Sawan school vanish without a trace from Delhi which he did for the sake of adding the school’s twenty-odd acres of land to his existing hun
19 comments
Read more

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
37 comments
Read more

Pranita a perverted genius

Bulldozer begins its work at Sawan Pranita was a perverted genius. She had Machiavelli’s brain, Octavian’s relentlessness, and Levin’s intellectual calibre. She could have worked wonders if she wanted. She could have created a beautiful world around her. She had the potential. Yet she chose to be a ruthless exterminator. She came to Sawan Public School just to kill it. A religious cult called Radha Soami Satsang Beas [RSSB] had taken over the school from its owner who had never visited the school for over 20 years. This owner, a prominent entrepreneur with a gargantuan ego, had come to the conclusion that the morality of the school’s staff was deviating from the wavelengths determined by him. Moreover, his one foot was inching towards the grave. I was also told that there were some domestic noises which were grating against his patriarchal sensibilities. One holy solution for all these was to hand over the school and its enormous campus (nearly 20 acres of land on the outskirts
13 comments
Read more

Sanjay and other loyalists

AI-generated illustration Some people, especially those in politics, behave as if they are too great to have any contact with the ordinary folk. And they can get on with whoever comes to power on top irrespective of their ideologies and principles. Sanjay was one such person. He occupied some high places in Sawan school [see previous posts, especially P and Q ] merely because he knew how to play his cards more dexterously than ordinary politicians. Whoever came as principal, Sanjay would be there in the elite circle. He seemed to hold most people in contempt. His respect was reserved for the gentry. I belonged to the margins of Sawan society, in Sanjay’s assessment. So we hardly talked to each other. Looking back, I find it quite ludicrous to realise that Sanjay and I lived on the same campus 24x7 for a decade and a half without ever talking to each other except for official purposes.      Towards the end of our coexistence, Sawan had become a veritable hell. Power supply to the
12 comments
Read more