Sanam Bewafa

The government's aim is to make small tractors more affordable for small farmers. However, small tractors have as many parts as big ones, and they cost about the same to assemble; so it is difficult to make a small tractor much cheaper than a large one. So the government exempts small tractors from duty; large tractors are charged 10 per cent duty. For the excise department, however, a small tractor must be 100 per cent small: if it uses the same mudguard as a large tractor, it is not a small tractor. For such miscegenated articles the excise department has made Rule 57CC: if there is an offending common mudguard, the duty-free tractor would bear a duty of 8 per cent, plus duty on components made in-house "" altogether more than 10 per cent. The government's intention of exempting the entire small tractor from duty is subverted; the imperatives of revenue prevail.

 

The government makes a rule that if a pharmaceutical manufacturer invents and patents a drug with its own research and development, the drug would be exempt from price control. So a company makes a drug, establishes manufacturing facilities, and starts producing it. Some time later some other firm gets a licence from abroad for a substantially similar drug, but finds that it is subject to price control. So it complains of discrimination, and the drug of the inventor firm is also brought into price control.

No one wants to set up industry in the outlying and terrorist-infested areas "" Kashmir, Himachal, Arunachal, etc. So the government exempts companies which set up production in these areas of corporation tax. Then suddenly a bright young finance minister comes along and slaps a minimum alternate tax on their profits. When they protest, he says he cannot understand why they are crying themselves hoarse over such a small matter.

Maybe he is right; maybe the protestors are wasting their breath. Maybe the idea that the government should keep its promises, is just outmoded. But those who believe that the government can do no wrong should not be surprised if their victims get the notion that they should never expect justice from the government, or if they adopt subterfuge as a standard weapon against an arbitrary government. In the process, both are losers: the government defeats its own objectives, and its victims are turned into lawbreakers in self-defence.