Editorial, "BUDGET AT OUR GLANCE" in Vol. 16, Part 1, No. 3, 15 February 2020 issue

BUDGET AT OUR GLANCE

It may be the longest ever speech (160 minutes) in Parliament by a Union Finance Minister, but this presented on 1 February 2020 does not look any better than the previous ones. In fact, the budget does not take into account the continuous slide down of the growth for the last six quarters and projects somewhat unachievable target of 6.5% growth rate and creates a delusion in the minds of the people. There is no substantial increase in the immediate welfare benefits to the people and DownToEarth laments that in reality the funds for women welfare programs got constricted and Chidambaram slams it for doing nothing to create jobs for the youths in the country with the growing unemployment rate now and terms the budget as a ‘laundry list of old programs’. The Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi has termed it repetitive and with no strategic idea to uplift the country, Shashi Tharoor said there is nothing stimulating in it to give the kind of development we need and the Marxist party concentrated mainly on the flawed thoughts and measures on education, health care and inflation control. To us it seems largely private corporate sector oriented, further reducing the corporate tax burdens, in false belief that it will lead to growth and trickle down processes for the country’s good, ever doubtful assumption. There is no reason why corporate taxes cannot be significantly increased in a graduated scale at least to a 40% cap and as also why income taxes cannot be increased likewise to a 60% cap even. Whereas the US Federal Budget receives 50%, and UK about 28% from income taxes, we just receive 17% indicating the need to widen tax base as also increase at the higher slabs. For lower income tax payers obviously the said concessions given prove damaging when removal of standard exemptions taken into note. There should be a way and measure to have all incomes taxed, with lower incomes taxed still less, and higher still more in a graduated scale. Also expenditures on provision of basic necessities, education, public health, employment and infrastructure for strictly necessary ends need to be increased and streamlined and agriculture and industry promoted by incentives at the start up phase but taxed well after they pick up and enter the profit phase. Now almost all the agricultural landlords and capitalists are going tax free and especially the government lavish spending and the Nawab style living of the leaders at public expense have to be eliminated. Maybe this is just a thinking aloud.  §§§

Editorial, "Peace to Prosperity? Scheme of the Century?" in Vol. 16, Part 1, No. 2, 31 January 2020 issue

PEACE TO PROSPERITY? 

SCHEME OF THE CENTURY?

Having failed to deliver his pre-poll promises to American people to prove himself a Messiah of peace and prosperity instead of a Moloch of war, and having taken to failed attempts to forge peace with some, and incite coups against some other, sovereign states also, President Trump seems to have finally bowed down to the belligerent bipartisan deep state of the U.S. and its main provocateur-beneficiary the Jewish lobby and in cahoots with the Zionist terrorist Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu invented a new Peace to Prosperity Scheme of the Century purporting to solve the more than a century old conflict in the Middle East. Perhaps all this servility to the base Zionist interests may not serve him, ultimately the Mossad may cause or aid his assassination even and then put the blame on Iran, or Russia, etc. to provoke another bigger and more calamitous war to gain more advantage to Israel at the expense of American blood and money! But, with the thousand ‘NO’s by the Palestinian President Mr. Abbas, and its rejection by the Arab League too, this seems to be a non-starter for the present, though there is no guarantee that its essence would not be pushed brutally through one-sidedly. A cursory analysis of it shows that Palestinians are now left with only some stray patches amounting to less than 10% of the territorial area within a Greater Israel, instead of the original 46% of the area awarded to them by the UN Partition Plan of 1947, and except for the narrow Gaza strip under constant bombardment by the Israeli IDF, the entire State will be landlocked, and in any future conflict with Israel could be closed by the Israeli forces in no time, with no ways of retreat/escape even. Moreover, placing the entire security concerns of Palestine in the hands of Israel as per this Scheme, means it would have to languish as a vassal state forever. All this is totally against the innumerable UN Security Council and General Assembly resolutions calling for Israeli withdrawal from occupied territories and self-determination to the people of Palestine. This editor opines that only if and when Israel withdraws from the occupied territories as per the UN Resolutions, and Jerusalem itself is made a corpus separatum under UN auspices; real justice and self-determination accorded to the Palestinian people and Israel itself freed from the stranglehold of the Zionist terrorist state with its apartheid policies and measures, peace and prosperity can actually dawn in that ‘accursed region’ and this Scheme of the Century is only fit to be thrown out into the Mediterranean Sea. §§§