Letters. Oil taxes

With reference to the Editorial “Cut now” (May 8), during the period from 2014 to 2016 when the global oil prices were drastically heading south, the Centre did not pass on the entire benefits to the end-users but sliced a part of it (benefits) by way of hiking excise duty to keep its revenue intact. Now, where there is a continued upward trend in oil prices at international market, the Centre should share the burden by reducing the excise duty, instead of passing it entirely on to consumers.

It is also noteworthy that the Centre — pressurised by the diminished value of the Rupee coupled with trade-deficit — has to manage the widening Current Account Deficit (CAD). There are two viable measures to adopt. First and immediate measure is to bring the petroleum products into the domain of GST with reasonable tax-rate as it will certainly assuage inflationary pressure.

Second, slowly but significantly adopting e-mobility, as announced by Nitin Gadkari, Minister of Road Transport and Highways, would certainly reduce the requirement for transportation fuel — petrol and diesel. But adequate investment on production of electronic vehicles and e-mobility infrastructure such as charging stations can be garnered by stimulus packages by the Central and State governments. In the long run, e-mobility will also preserve our environment.

The dynamic price mechanism of the NDA government which gave freedom to Oil Marketing Companies (OMC) to revise fuel prices on a daily basis since July last year has now been virtually put on hold for close to two weeks. Reasons are not far to seek. It was done purely on keeping Karnataka Assembly polls in mind. No price revision was effected since April 24 by OMCs ostensibly on the instructions from powers that be. Discernible freeze on revising fuel prices only to avert the negative fallout from the electoral battles reflect badly on the Modi government’s commitment to fuel pricing reforms.

Rather than on offloading the burden of high fuel prices on consumers by transferring the burden on to the OMCs, which is unsustainable in the longer run, it is time the government cuts the excise duty of petrol and diesel before bringing them under the purview of Goods and Services Tax.

Sholavandan

With reference to ‘Aadhaar-ration link saves ₹17,000 crore’ (May 8), this linking has enabled the government to unearth whopping 2.62 crore bogus ration card to save ₹17,000 crore to the exchequer. So it is unfathomable why certain political parties, intellectuals among others are objecting to it vehemently. Do these worthies want the unscrupulous elements to have their way? Opposing for the sake of opposition is not in the larger interest of the country. There may be some hiccups in the initial stages but deriving immense benefit due to linking Aadhaar to social schemes over a period of time could put the vested interests at bay.

Bengaluru

It was heartening to read the report ‘IIT Delhi set up three research parks ‘ (May 8). Recently NR Narayanamurthy made an observation that in 60 years, India has failed to make any earth shaking invention. This is mainly due to our faulty education system which does not encourage research and invention. When a small country like Estonia takes credit for invention of Skype, India despite having so many IITs and IIMs has failed miserably to make any impact on innovative technology/new inventions/or research.

This goes to show that the IITs/IIMs in India are merely pumping out graduates, who are going after big pay packages. One of the solutions to make our IITs research and invention oriented is by making them autonomous with minimal or no government interference. Only people of repute with expertise and knowledge and known for their academic flair should head the IITs and IIMs.

These institutions should be hubs for invention and research and should create more entrepreneurs who will create jobs. We want our premier institutes to create more jobs for the millions of jobless people with their innovations, research and entrepreneurial skills.

Thane