below the line. Best of Indian democracy?

At a recent industry meet on GST, Chief Economic Adviser Arvind Subramanian tried to be optimistic about the long delay, saying that instead of being despondent over the parliamentary logjam on the Bill, it should be seen as the best of Indian democracy with successive governments working on the issue. However, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley was not so optimistic. Referring to the CEA’s speech, Jaitley said the two certainties of life are death and taxes. “But when death is preceded by a prolonged illness it becomes agonising. I hope the same doesn’t happen to GST.” The minister attributed the CEA’s views to his being a “non-politician”, adding: “If this is the best of Indian democracy, the best can become better if the decision-making process, instead of decades, is curtailed to years.”

Speaking of hurt feelings

The Kerala Assembly, which has seen angry agitations by lawmakers, witnessed a unique protest last week. Speaker N Sakthan went on a protest strike! Sakthan, who was elected from the Kattakkada constituency on a Congress ticket, stayed away from the House for four hours on Wednesday. The reason: he was hurt by when, on the previous day, Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala (also from the Congress) had said that passing a Bill cannot be done as quickly as making a dosa. The comment was aimed at the Speaker who had asked an MLA to hurry and wind up the debate. It was only when Chennithala apologised that Sakthan returned to the House, to applause. Clearly, Speakers have feelings, too.

Good sounding tax

Between the special additional duty that the earlier NDA regime introduced and the GST that the current dispensation wants to introduce, India Inc clearly prefers the latter, said a corporate honcho. The reason? The acronym for special additional duty spelt ‘SAD’; on the other hand, he said, whichever way GST was expanded, it sounded good: “We hope GST will be a Good and Simple Tax; we hope it will be a Good and Stable Tax. If all this happens, it will be a Greatly Successful Tax.” Hmmmm....

Hyderabadi hardsell

The audience at Novartis’ launch of its hi-tech office in Hyderabad was pleasantly surprised when Telangana’s IT minister, KT Rama Rao, not only turned up on time, he addressed the young gathering with a “Hi guys”.

Dressed in a semi-formal white shirt, beige slacks and natty shoes, the minister told competing real estate players involved in the massive projects coming up in the region to help hardsell the State as “you have more selling points on Hyderabad than the government has”. Listing the many corporates that have made Hyderabad home, he used his easy persuasive style to tell Novartis India head Ranjit Shahani to look at the Pharma City that was coming up, despite his possible “bias” towards Maharashtra.

Filling up party coffers

The Karnataka government plans to hand out over 1,700 licences to open retail liquor shops across the State, claiming the move will curb the sale of illicit liquor. The last time the State government gave away licences was two decades ago. But apparently, this is the not the only reason for issuing licences. Some time ago, the Congress party had said that it was woefully short of funds and critics say that the sudden move to issue licences could be one way to fill up the State’s party coffers.

Social media sabbatical?

“Take a sabbatical of three years from Facebook and WhatsApp if you want to pass the CA exam.” This was the advice of the former president of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India, K Raghu, to aspiring CAs. Speaking at a conclave for CA students organised by the Mangaluru branch of ICAI recently, he said “cut down time if you can’t stay away”, but the best solution is to stay away altogether for three years.

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