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No blame games, no pointing fingers at anyone. This blog is devoted to each and every Indian – to love our country – to love every person sitting out here – to live peacefully. This blog is to reach out to every Indian to fight for strincter security systems and leave excessive peaceful attitude behind.

At this hour of the saddest moments in world’s history, let us come together and pray for all those who have gone through the trauma for nearly 50 hours. For our armed forces, they have always been there to let Indians live without a scratch… for those brave hearts, who risked their lives and families for others… for those people who have battled for their lives…

Let us salute each and every Indian true hero and brave heart, let us stand by for our country – we’re one, we’re indians!

I actually don’t know whom to blame in particular, so I thought I’ll put in a more generalised name – the entire finance ministry, though I would like to add the Reserve Bank of India too in the list! Of course this is another blog on our politicians, about me cursing corruption and how our economy is sinking deep in the ocean of manipulated pessimistic recession!

Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy – hundreds and thousands of Indians are wondering why should America or even just Lehman Brothers,  B & B, WaMu, Wachovia et al cut such a deep wound in the Indian economy? None of these had much to do with India and vice versa too.

Blame it on our Finance Minister or rather the entire chunk of these ministries working in harmony towards corruption. I’m not claiming that the non – ministries MPs are any better! 13.50% – thats our proud- to- boast- about- interest rate; I think this should really find some place in history books for our future gen to know what visionaries our harvard educated FM and RBI governor are. The 12% inflation still never dropped by 1bps ! Now thats shining India Inc growing to touch the sky :) Proud of you India Inc.

So before our ministers could battle against the inflation, a deep recession wiped the entire face of humanity. Suddenly, post Diwali, the new year began with 60-90% reduction in production and sales. So bad is the state that thousands of people are losing jobs – not just in big corporations, but tiny scale industries are also laying off workers. Companies are slashing salaries by 30% across the board. There is so much fear and so much liquidity crunch in the economy. And not to forget the media – creating another wave of panic to sell their news!

So what’s going wrong? INTEREST RATES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Nothing else – interest rate and only interest rate. Respected Deepak Parekh – HDFC Bank CEO (I really admire him as a visionary) has so clearly attacked the media and moresoever the government for its lack of vision and action. But ofcourse our government is only thinking of winnig the elections next year – so why would it reduce the interest rate ( I don’t think reducing by 50 bps is of any significance)? Inflation would rise again apparantly and then the “aam admi” would suffer and not vote our dear Congress back again. Hell, please do not make PC Chidambaram our FM once again! Our country cannot take his dirty load – we need an Obama change now ;)

What is spectacular in our country is the amount of subsidies the oil companies are given – at the cost of the tax payer. Guess what? We pay custom duty, excise duty, VAT and in Maharashtra even Octroi to buy petrol / diesel at such high costs. Then besides this, we get the worst quality fuel in the world at the highest price per litre. And then, from the taxpayer’s money, the subsidies are given to ensure oil companies don’t suffer losses. SO at RS 54 a lt petrol, oil companies are still making losses!! So a bit of my income tax also goes to the oil giants! Hilarious…. if only they stopped using oil companies like “baap ki daulat”

Coming back to the present, government’s aims to curb inflation has created a panic in the country. WIth our population of 1.2 bn, we really don’t need an America to survive. We just need our government to act quickly on real economic policies, and not on political policies. Obsession to curb inflation has cause loss of employment to so many people – not that our unemployment rates are the lowest in the world either!

PC Chidambaram, may be he’s a real learned man – but he’s been cursed and cursed by India Inc – first for his corruption and the corruption he’s bred in the CBDT & CBIDT and second for his erratic and irrational taxation policies – the most famous FBT! Ridiculous – picture this – if you travel to the income tax dept to file your return, you have to pay 10% tax on the conveyance bill…. sounds very logical – does Harvard teach this? Or if you are on a business travel / visit – 15% tax on the bill. Wow – he’s definitely promoting business – I think Harvard must be ashamed of him by now! Man, when we’re paying income tax, why FBT on poor innocent sincere tax payer? It’s almost illegal to do business in India. Who the hell pays tax on business expense? Further, he’s bred in corruption in the departments – a company with marginal profits of 20 lacs a year is sent a scrutiny letter to bring before the officer all the documents which are already presented at the time of filing return. In my own experience, I have seen ITO asking more detail version of the expenses – from whom, name, address, purpose – now do we have to justify why we bought a broom and soap and computer as well?

OK, this was just income tax, then there is Indirect tax dept - people who would make sure you just don’t do business – just earn money for them – and help them make merry while you slog. Then there is the sales tax dept – I think one of the most peaceful – yet full of norms and regualtions. The list just goes on…. with a million registration dept and bla bla bla dept. So much for doing business.

Effectively, I would like to suggest an Einstien plan – the government should pay corporates for all the government work corporates have to do. I;m sure salary costs and other bla bla bla costs would reduce so much that we would see almost 100% jump in profits. Now, wasn’t that a true harvard educated plan?

My Book Reading sessions:

1) State of Fear 2) Seizure 3) The World is Flat 4) The Six Sigma Way 5) Light Emerging (on Reiki ) 6) The definitive book on Body Language My wanted book wish list : 1) The Shack 2) The Medici Dagger 3) The Toyota Way 4) The First Apostle

What would you like to see today?