Words are Weariness

Pulses have gone past 200 kg and there is great hullabaloo. Political parties are using it as a saber to cut and thrust at Modi Government. News papers are reporting the 'raids' on traders and the capture of thousands of tonnes of stocks which is also said to be softening prices while actually it does nothing of the kind. It is common sense,  when you raid stocks with traders and impound them, the impact will be disruption in supplies which can only act to increase prices. The government is reported to have 'successfully raided' and impounded about 85000 mt tonnes of Pulses, mostly from Mumbai. Most of these quantities belong to importers who had contracted to import large quantities at prices   between Rs.85/kg to Rs.135/kg during the last few months when it became apparent that Khariff crop of Pulses is bad following the failure of monsoon. It is likely these stocks rot in ports or godowns sealed by Government, benefiting nobody except the bureaucracy that will ex

While Jaitley bravely declares GST will be resolved before 2016, and the bill will be presented in the winter session of the parliament, the fact is here tthere is still no consensus on some aspects of the conceptual design.A news report in 'The Economic Times' on the 25 th of Sept, 2015 talks of some states asking for powers to tax the Business-to-Business(B2B) transactions. This means the concept of GST being a destination tax should be applied in B2C scenarios and not in B2B scenarios of inter-state commerce. Nothing is more damaging to the cause of GST if such a course is adopted. It will be better not to tinker with the Indirect taxation regime as it is than to tinker with GST and allow all kinds of exceptions and deviations that are antithetic to the idea of common market creep into it. Such arguments reflect a very narrow thinking and are mooted by ill-informed bureaucrats in the states to curry favor with obdurate and intemperate state politicians like Jayala

I am yet to come across an informative article in the mainstream media on what GST is and why is it an important milestone in the Indian economic history. The media, wedded as it is to sensationalism, hardly ever discusses it except in terms of skulduggery by Congress and BJP. Even when  it does , feebly or incompletely, as a result of the din it raises on other such banal issues around the affairs of a 'celebrity' murderess or about foolish acts like meat bans, people who want to maintain sanity tend to ignore them as a necessary mechanism of coping with life in present day India. What is more surprising is the quality of reportage in the pink press which should know better and try to create public opinion strongly in favour of GST. There is one from an economist in a premier national economic research bureau arguing that GST is being hyped up and it is not some magic wand that would boost our GDP numbers. There is another, more recent one in the editorial page

Persistence of Memory - by Salvador Dali Last time when I went home, there was nobody there, except for him sitting in his cot as was his wont. There must be something about the cot which tied our Annan ( big brother ) to it, seemingly for ever. Through the window behind the cot, you could see the mango tree with its tender leaves and fresh flowers standing in dignified silence under the scorching sun. Two women underneath, in contrast, were in constant chatter moving about a clothesline wringing and hanging clothes to dry. As the women tied one end of a brown saree to a post to stretch it free of wrinkles, the sun shining thru it produced light of a different hue, our Annan was sitting there with an expression of contentment on his face, as if laughter had just prevailed and subsided. Our big brother was in the same state of stupor, till I asked him, “Where are the others?”.as I was keeping the bag down. “Welcome home Kittu” , he replied, “They have all