The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Changes in tax laws
Pranab allays industry’s fears

THE Union Budget for 2012-13 has tried to plug certain loopholes in the tax laws and proposed stiffer penalties for tax-avoidance and non-compliance of the rules. It has made retrospective changes in tax provisions relating to international transactions in the wake of the Supreme Court judgement in the Vodafone-Hutchison case. The budget has introduced the General Anti-Avoidance Rule, popularly known as GAAR, which will enable the Income Tax Department to deny tax benefits to companies if tax officials are convinced that a particular transaction is aimed at dodging tax in India. This is meant to thwart attempts by companies to float entities in countries like Mauritius with the sole purpose of avoiding taxes in India.

The new provisions in the tax laws are in line with reforms enshrined in the Direct Taxes Code, which has been delayed by another year. Industrialists and foreign investors, however, fear that the new rules give tax commissioners the powers to harass or arrest them. Some feel the retrospective changes in the tax laws would lead to the reopening of old cases. Interacting with captains of industry in Delhi on Sunday, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee allayed these fears. He clarified that the tax officials would not act as policemen and old cases would not be reopened to target industrialists. Had the retrospective amendments been not moved, those who had paid taxes would ask for refunds, he argued.

Fear of misuse of GAAR, media reports about a so-called coal scam and concerns that the RBI might not cut interest rates in April weighed on the BSE Sensex, which plunged 308 points on Monday. Indian companies in general and foreign institutional investors in particular expect the tax laws to be simpler and clearer. Not many of them would like to evade taxes. Uncertainty, however, about tax implications can hit mergers and acquisitions. The dreaded Inspector Raj is still around and keeps surfacing in one form or the other.

Deaths no accident
J&K has to get eyes back on road

FROM 1,126 deaths in road accidents in 2009 to a little over 1,000 in 2011, the number of fatalities in Jammu and Kashmir per year has come down a bit, but that is no consolation. The figure is still far above the national average, which itself is pretty bad. The numbers are strikingly similar to Himachal Pradesh, which is also averaging 1,100 accidents per year. Hill states, for obvious reasons, are more prone to accidents, but then that calls for that much extra care. Authorities in J&K do seem to have applied their mind to the menace, at least that’s how it appears from the way they have given cogent explanations for the accidents in the reports on the subject in The Tribune on Monday. The question is, how far are they able to — or willing to — go to address the menace.

The foremost cause identified is tired or reckless drivers. Tired because they are overexploited by bus owners, and reckless because they are paid per trip. More the trips, more the money. As the police says, how will it know if a driver is sleepy? The authorities have to take up the matter with the operators, and bring pressure on them to clean up their act. Maybe the situation also calls for the drivers to form an effective union to counter their exploitation. It is people’s lives that are at stake.

The design and quality of roads is another matter, which requires money as well as good administration. J&K has long been taken up with the problem of terrorism. Now that peace seems to be making a comeback, the government has to turn its attention to other aspects of governance too, including road infrastructure. The Centre also has to pitch in, as growth needs roads, and once there is development, there is increased traffic. Involve all stakeholders — state transport, private operators, commuters, police, and even drivers — to put heads together, and work out a plan that may deliver. Shrugging shoulders will only let the deaths continue unabated.

Thought for the Day

I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.

— E. B. White

ARTICLE

Allocations for ad-hoc projects
Haryana budget minus long-term strategy
by Surinder Kumar

THE Haryana Finance Minister, Mr Harmohinder Singh Chattha, presented the state budget for 2012-13 in the Legislative Assembly on March 5. He claimed that the Haryana economy was on a high growth path and it registered an impressive growth rate of 9.3 per cent in the last four years which is well above the national average. The per capita income in Haryana was the highest, next only to Goa, and it was expected to be Rs 1,09,227 at current prices by the end of 2011-12.

The Finance Minister highlighted that in the proposed budget, the annual plan (Rs 14500 crore) for 2012-13 accords the highest priority to the social sectors with a provision of 53.28 per cent of the total outlay for social sectors: social security and welfare of weaker sections, old age pension, etc (11.61 per cent), education and skill development (20.25 per cent), health including medical education (3.91 per cent), and drinking water (5.38 per cent).

The second major outlay (28.66 per cent) was for basic infrastructure in irrigation, power and road transport. Some public persons have termed the budget as "disappointing", "lacklustre" and adding to the debt burden of the state. In this background there is need to examine the Haryana state budget for 2012-13.

The Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act 2003 (FRBMA) provides that the Central and state governments in India should eliminate revenue deficit and reduce fiscal deficit to 3 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product/income by March 2008. However, due to the international financial crisis in 2007, the deadline for its implementation was deferred. Haryana had a surplus (1.47 per cent of GSDP) on revenue account in 2007-08. Its revenue deficit increased to 1.92 per cent of GSDP in 2009-10 and got reduced to 1.04 per cent of GSDP in 2010-11. The fiscal deficit in Haryana increased to 4.5 per cent of GSDP in 2009-10. Since then, it shows a declining trend and it is estimated to be 2.5 per cent of GSDP in 2011-12.

As the budgetary proposals for 2012-13 show, revenue as well as fiscal deficits are likely to decline still further. The outstanding debt liability and state guarantees are expected to be Rs 60437 crore (17.31 per cent of the GSDP) in accordance with the 2012-13 budget estimates, and its interest payment as a proportion of revenue receipts would be 14.09 per cent. The public debt/borrowings and budgetary deficits per se were not a bad financial management of public funds, provided revenue was being used for productive purposes and was clearly targeted. The total budgetary subsidy shows an increasing trend and it stood at Rs 4026 crore in 2011-12 which needs a consideration and better targeting, especially the unmetered and subsidised supply of electricity for irrigation.

The budget appears to be a pack of allocations for ad-hoc projects devoid of any long-term strategy of socio-economic transformation. It is laudable that the Haryana government has accorded a higher priority to social and infrastructure sectors and has focussed on the human development index. The vicinity of the NCR region induced growth can provide the desired benefits to its people only up to a limit. Mitigation of its ill-effects requires a vision and long-term planning. The fast changes in the NCR region are overwhelming and overtaking the state political leadership, and it does not appear to measure up to the task. Unemployment in the state is on the increase; social and economic disparities are widening. The health delivery system is on the verge of collapse. The delivery of public services is at its lowest ebb.

It is claimed in the budget that education in the state has been accorded the highest priority. But the budget does not reflect any serious underlying policy frame or planning. The youngsters coming out of schools, colleges and universities are adding to the army of "unemployable" and ill-equipped frustrated persons with a latent feeling of being cheated. The education system at school and higher levels needs a complete overhaul. Experimentation with ill-thought-out ad-hoc policies and programmes is playing havoc with the education system. Unfortunately, the introduction of the ill-planned semester system is proving devastating for school and college education. The policy of opening private education, management and engineering institutes is eating into the vitals of the existing education system in the state.

To establish some new schools in the name of "Aarohi Model Schools" and four degree colleges, as proposed in the budget, is a populist measure which does not touch even the fringe of the malaise or the problem. Opening up of private universities without credibility or commitment to the public cause amounts to stark commercialisation and a licence to mint money, and they cannot meet the genuine needs and aspirations of the local people.

All this fuels social discontentment, and the state appears to be seated on a volcano of youth anger. This is manifesting the demands for reservation in jobs for various communities, slogans of sons of the soil, etc. Timely and effective intervention with well-thought-out planning and direction is the need of the hour, as an ad-hoc policy regime underlying the budget proposals will not deliver the desired results.

The writer is RBI Chair Professor, Centre for Research in Rural and Industrial Development (CRRID), Chandigarh. The views expressed are personal.

MIDDLE

Case of the missing shoe
by Rajbir Deswal

THE shoe missing the target may not be as amusing as the shoe gone missing is, if you believe me. Well, I had then come out of the hall where we attended a brief family ceremony. Trying to find my shoes, I nearly rummaged through the entire shoe-spread when, to my dismay, I found only one of the pair. A further probe revealed that there was one more shoe lying unclaimed. This one too got separated from its twin. It was clear that someone had mistook my shoe for his and leisurely walked away, rendering both of us poorer in literal bootlegging.

Then began Operation Find. Everyone around started suggesting the efficacy of their time-tested techniques of pinning down the defaulter, discounting for the misdemeanour on his part that he could not have done it on purpose. The first thing to ascertain was to find out who had left just prior to my ushering out of the hall, for there weren't many more who wound up early. And one person was named while my son, to save me from the embarrassment of wearing two different shoes, offered his pair.

The one named was contacted on the phone. He had gone 20 km away when the caller asked him to reveal information if he was wearing brown shoes or black. I am sure the one called would have been bamboozled with the query, but he replied that it was a brown pair that he wore. "Okay then! It's not you!" the caller informed the called and hung up to add in the same tone this time to us, "It's not him!"

The called one now kept calling back, and was informed of the mix-up when he himself suggested the name of another one, who left the venue along with him and who might be the culprit, blissfully being unaware of the jumble.

Now was the turn of the second person to be called who had already reached his office. "What trade-mark shoe are you wearing and what size are they?" was the non-leading question. I am sure the Babu must have thought it was some frustrated junior who was intimidating him with the recently introduced catalyst to getting things done faster, or if not, then at least venting one's ire. But, recognising the voice, he did make a statement adding that he always wore lace-shoes, for obvious reasons, covering some risk in official business. The talk with him eliminated another probe area and dimmed our hope.

All through the investigation we had our eyes dipped. No, not for any other reason but for the fact that the mix-up, it was possible, could be traced, as they say, just under one’s pillow. And to use another vernacular expression — crying hoarse on missing a child while carrying it in the lap. A good look at the heterogeneously-yoked-by-accident-together pair of different shoes revealed the status of the wearers although they looked fairly similar, despite different shine on them.

Cutting a long story short, it was only after a couple of hours later when, after a memory-headcount of all who attended the ritual, an old teacher of my son was identified. My son went to the teacher who was taking his class. The latter beamed with joy to see him, asking where in the United States he lived and that what a pleasant surprise it was to have been called on by one of his favourite ex-students.

Looking at his feet, my son, in the meanwhile, had confirmed that his "Sir" was the one who hadn't by then found a cop's boots big enough for him. On being informed about the real purpose of the visit, he was all guffaws — his usual absent-minded self. The poor teacher got his shoe back and I had mine.

OPED — entertainment

Neither feminine nor feminist
There is a thin line dividing sexual freedom and sexual violation. By mouthing filth and being blatantly sexual in The Dirty Picture, does Vidya Balan represent the quintessential Indian woman, for which she was honoured with a National award?
Shelley Walia

ON March 7, Vidya Balan won the National Award in the “Best Actress” category for her film ‘The Dirty Picture.’ It was perhaps the close proximity of the date with International Woman’s Day, observed on March 8, that led Barkha Dutt, the anchor of the show “The Buck Stops Here”, to include Balan among the panel of women — featuring the likes of Medha Patkar and Kiran Bedi — gathered together to argue about women’s empowerment. This bemused me because I have believed for some time that there could be no direct connection between the rights of women and the manner in which Vidya Balan was portrayed in this film. What was odd on several counts was that although the film and its heroine had won major awards in virtually all Bollywood functions—Screen, Filmfare, Stardust and so on—they could generate the same sort of frenzy at the National Awards, which, I have always considered to be a class apart.

Vidya Balan is, no doubt, accomplished in two ways: she plays Silk ( Vijayalakshmi better known as Silk Smitha, a sought after erotic actress of the 80s, who did about 450 films in Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and Hindi) to perfection, although I cannot vouch for the authenticity of her portrayal; and she has, for the moment at least, shocked a male film industry into accepting that a woman can determine the financial health of a film. It has to be said, though, that sexual explicitness, to a large extent, will no doubt ensure box-office gains.

Did the character subvert male power?

In assaying the character of Silk, which is what makes the film a biopic, I cannot disagree that Balan has talent. So she deserves awards and accolades. But national awards are distinctions given for the best Indian cinema that promotes Indian art and culture by the President of the country who also happens to be a woman. This prompts one to think about the subject of the film—a woman called Silk. Who was she? Was she a “woman of substance”, some kind of “iron lady” who subverted male power? In what way, by getting into her skin, does Vidya Balan claim to “celebrate sexuality” or “push the envelope”, two phrases she incessantly loves to repeat in media interviews? Silk Smitha was not, by any stretch of the imagination, an empowered woman: she personified sleaze, rose to prominence in the Southern film industry precisely because she enabled box-office successes through her sexually audacious item numbers. While Vidya has talent, the character she portrays is far from being a feminist. We must make this distinction, therefore, between the actor and the character.

What has dignified the film is its recent “intellectualization”, courtesy the many reviews of the film which claim that Vidya Balan challenges conventional representations of gender as well as the spate of her recent appearances on television where we see her in a new avatar, that of a spokesperson for the empowerment of women. Her frequent appearances on Barkha Dutt’s shows (Dutt herself being a role model for a successful woman) have gone a long way in championing Vidya Balan as some sort of revolutionary representative of womankind. How does she send out a progressive message for social and cultural transformation which, in turn, emasculates men into accepting the power of a woman?

Is woman defined by her sexuality alone?

From what I have heard and read, ‘The Dirty Picture’ purports to be a representation of woman as a transgressive force, that both straddles and threatens the boundary in uncertain ways, appearing both as an aggressive sexual agent and a natural sexual victim. Women have always been used by men; it is now for women to use them for pleasure and material gain, if only through their bodies. Silk is a protagonist who has thrown the gauntlet to the world, making them see their ugly, raunchy faces in the mirror of a society that allows men to enjoy all forms of deviant sexual behavior, but the same is prohibited for women. Understandably, then, the crux of ‘The Dirty Picture’ lies in the definition of a woman through her sexuality. Some French feminists have done it, so why not Silk? Silk must therefore evoke both dread and admiration.

If this is the message of the film, so far so good. But as it turns out, the film reveals that a woman’s sensual nature is also her natural character. I say this because she is sexually manipulative both on and off screen. She traps men by using her body to act in roles which too are “bold”. But when these men tire of her heaving bosom, and when the audience—consisting of a male majority—wants a change, the rejection of the female body becomes a material reality. Silk commits suicide. There is no alternate reading between the lines but the abject subservience to a male sexual domination where the woman’s body, yet again, becomes a victim. A “naïve conviction” of bestowing some empowerment on women, remains, in the words of Levi Strauss “allied to a greater intellectual poverty”. Man’s power in the end remains absolute, unapologetic and bedrock. More to the point, why should art proclaim this male authority?

But, to be fair, what makes the film feminist, in Vidya’s formulation, is the element of “choice”: while Silk Smitha did not exercise it, her character in the film does. In other words, while the former was exploited, the latter allows her exploitation on her own terms since she inhabits her sexuality quite comfortably. If so, how does choosing to be exploited any better than being a victim of exploitation? If Silk was a victim, then her character in the film is equally a victim, only willfully so. The element of choice hardly dignifies her stance. If it did, why would she have to die? Academic validation does not make the film a liberating text or free it from a sexist representation which only allows men to continue to despise women.

Slotting women in a new stereotype

In this (non)celebration of female sexuality, obscenity plays a big part. The salacious danger to one’s sensibilities by the highly libidinal Vidya/Silk, driven by sex and consumed by a passion that caters to the sex-starved audience, is exacerbated by the frank focus on sexually explicit material that is at once fascinating and discomfiting. It seems that championing pornography is integral to challenging sexual repression. Yes, squeamish attitudes towards sex will not help in the liberation of women; we cannot chastise a woman for enjoying that which we love to do. But does speaking in a language that falls in the domain of filth, underpinned by the four letter word, become the “feminist” tongue of modern India, a tool to dismantle male discourse? If this is a film that was meant to overturn the ongoing male dominance and exploitation of the women’s body which has always been under the “misogynist pornographic gaze”, much has to be said about its loyalty to upholding the woman’s status in our society, and its politically emancipatory inclinations.

Such analyses always tend to polarize thought between binaries: it would be easy to posit another category of women that exists in the Indian psyche, that of the ancient, Vedic women, a fetish of the prude mind, against whom the sexually provocative woman can be contrasted. But that is not intended here because the ancient Sita or Savitri were even more repressed in many ways. But blatant sexuality is not the way out of the morass because it slots women once again within the traditional stereotypes.

Dirty pictures sell

So what can one say about the recent incarnation of Vidya Balan that we see in TV interviews? Scarcely able to distinguish between “femininity” and “feminism”, Vidya claims to “celebrate . . . the way [she is]”. If ‘The Dirty Picture’ is that representation, how would Vidya answer scores of women in the country who, unlike her, have to negotiate their space in a nightmare of male control, who cannot afford to be the “entertainment” of roadside delinquents. National award winners should show the way, pioneer true emancipation. Vidya will walk away from the set, having mouthed her vulgarities, while many women in the real world will bear the brunt. If only the film were to beckon to us to try living beyond the boundaries framed by men, in which sexual freedom does not amount to sexual violation.

Dirty pictures sell and will keep selling in our social set-up until art does not provoke rage at the “natural right” of men possessing women. Vulgarization of language or the legitimation of cheap humour cannot be allowed to become the staple diet of the masses.

The writes is a professor of English at Panjab University

Pushing the envelop further...

If Silk was a victim, then her character in the film is equally a victim, only willfully so.

Blatant sexuality is not the way out of the morass because it slots women once again within the traditional stereotypes.

Vidya will walk away from the set, having mouthed her vulgarities, while many women in the real world will bear the brunt.