Free Chanakya's New Manifesto: To Resolve the Crisis Within India by Pavan K. Varma Page B

oil-marketing corporations are deep in debt. The Indian Oil Corporation’s borrowings have crossed73,000 crore. Hindustan Petroleum and Bharat Petroleum lost over3,000 crore each, in the second quarter of 2011-2012 alone.
    The payment of taxes is, especially for middle-class India, a key area of interface with the government, and an important source of much-needed revenue generation. But relative to our taxable population, the actual number of taxpayers is minuscule. One of the reasons for below par tax collections is that our tax laws are not simple and transparent. This only complicates the life for the honest taxpayer, and increases the scope for venality of the tax department. The implementation of a simplified Direct Tax Code has been inordinately delayed. Similarly, the Goods and Services Tax (GST), which will increase revenues, incentivize tax compliance and create a rational common market, has remained on the anvil for years. Commonplace technology initiatives, which can harness our prowess in IT to book tax evaders, are also perpetually in the realm of planning. Vital finance sector reforms which will increase dwindling foreign investment and create jobs have been pending for years. Robust banking and insurance and pension bills can be enacted to improve foreign direct investment (FDI) but it seems likely that only watered-down laws will come to pass. Reforms in Small Savings Schemes, such as the Employees Provident Fund, the Public Provident Fund and the National Savings Scheme, which are popular with small investors and the salaried class, have not fructified either. As has become the norm in decision making, committee after committee has examined the issues. In fact, the R. V. Gupta Committee gave its recommendations as far back as the 1990s. Since then three more committees—helmed by Y. V. Reddy, Rakesh Mohan and most recently, Shyamala Gopinath, have also given their learned advice. The blueprint is in place, but instead of translating it into action, the matter has once again been referred to the Finance Sector Legislative Reforms Committee.
    Education is another vital sector that touches the lives of all Indians. Primary education languishes in deep neglect. There is no accountability in government schools, especially in the countryside; teachers are recruited, paid salaries, but routinely do not turn up for work. The Right to Education Act is a laudable goal, but implementation, which requires a concrete plan to reform the working of government schools, and painstaking coordination with the states, is hardly focused, with avoidable ambivalence in terms like ‘local government’ and ‘neighbourhood schools’. As a result, states have not been able to respond with acceptable data, and funds from as many as fifteen of them have been withheld. The blame also lies with state governments, but as the tussle continues, children are missing out on a vital education.
    Higher education, which is the nursery for the hopes and aspirations of much of the middle class, is also in shambles, except for a handful of elite institutions, which are themselves less than stellar according to international rankings. A report prepared in November 2011 by Times Higher Education and Thomson Reuters did not feature a single Indian institution in the top 200 universities of the world. Twenty universities from Asia made the cut, including those from Beijing, Hong Kong, Japan and Singapore. Even more damaging is the report of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2009 which took education levels in Himachal Pradesh (H.P.) and Tamil Nadu as samples. Seventy-four regions participated in the report. Our two states were right at the bottom, beating out only Kyrgyzstan. In fact, in science education H.P. came in last, and Tamil Nadu was not much better at seventy-two.
    Incidentally, in states where there is political stability, which makes it possible for those so inclined to govern, the results can be dramatically