Best of BS Opinion: Vivad Se Vishwas scheme, Das' 2 years as RBI guv & more

Here's a selection of Business Standard opinion pieces for the day

Having failed to sway farmers with significant concessions on the new farm laws, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is falling back on the tropes in the Bharatiya Janata Party’s playbook, labelling protestors “anti-national” and the political parties backing them “conspirators”. What’s next? FIRs? Arrests under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act? Such visceral suspicion of the citizenry has been a staple of the tax departments, which ricochets between the raids and amnesty schemes, to hit challenging collection targets. The latest attempt to tempt evaders, Vivad Se Vishwas, has proved no more successful than its more prosaically named predecessors, principally because law breakers reciprocate tax authorities’ mistrust with interest. Instead of chasing such schemes, a greater focus on collecting tax dues without dispute may yield better results, A K Bhattacharya suggests in his column. Read it here. 

Other views examine Shaktikanta Das’s two years as Reserve Bank of India governor, the significance of the outage of Google’s services and the Competition Commission of India’s attempts to be “studious”. Kanika Datta sums up the views.