medical seats for sale

Headlines for past two days- seats for sale in Tamil Nadu medical colleges. Media highlights the scam, governments swing into action (or show of action)

Any well informed medical student, can tell you where all you can use money to buy seats. As donations, as management quota, and sometimes as high fees. The phenomenon is not new and not uncommon. Lakhs of students study hard year over year to become a doctors, and our system only adds to their hardships. The no. of medical seats is low, half of them are reserved and then there is this unfair advantage to the rich. Definitely demotivating.

Now our system (government-media-other power centers) will pretend to solve the problem by addressing these individual cases. 'Pretend' because most of them are beneficiaries of the business, and the history of their modus-operandi (set up inquiry commissions to dampen things first, and later forget it all) makes us all hopeless. Some good Samaritans shall go further by asking for legislation against such practices.

*

The real, workable solution is much simpler. Encourage private participation (investments) in medical education. Try public-private partnerships. Lower the entry barriers. Strengthen regulations to improve quality, but don't lay obstacles. Simply put, if Mr X wants to impart quality medical education with the aim of making money, allow him to do it.

The demand supply gap in medical education is huge, so seat-for-donation-quacks find buyers. Let the supply build, prices shall fall, people will have cheaper and better alternatives, and the market for the dishonest business shall die. Look at engineering education - its hard to find colleges asking similar donations. You might argue that setting up a medical college is far complex a job and needs far better expertise. My answer - do NOT underestimate the Indian entrepreneur. Just make him comply to quality, and even if that is tough, leave it to market too. The medical-education provider with better quality of learning, and reasonable pricing shall only survive.

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And there shall be another beneficiary to this - the Indian poor man.
(Remember there is just one doctor per 1700 people here, while the WHO recommends it to be 1:1000 in developing countries.)

Getting involved

Getting involved is the concept of citizens participating in social-governmental processes on a part time basis for the benefit of the society .

In India, such a concept is really lacking, and to an extent that even such an expectation generates sharp disagreements. The only instance I can give of such a thing being implemented is the rule that medical students should be doing internships in villages as a part of their curriculum. Not surprisingly, it was received with sufficient angst and negativity from the students. Apart from other reason that they gave, the most understandable is "why only us?"

That gives us the idea of "yes, why only them, why not other students too". Broadening this further, why just the students, why not everybody else (who is educated and capable). Sure everyone's skills might not be as badly needed as a doctor's skill, still there is no dearth of work for educated young men and women in the country.

So what I suggest is, every educated citizen of the country spend some time doing government duty. And every graduate student does this duty as a part of his curriculum. Time can be anything convenient - 15 days, 30 days, 20 weekends - anything. The benefits shall come back to us as a society. Below are listed problem areas in which the benefits can be clearly seen.

- Lack of teachers: Rural India lacks lacks trained teachers. The deficit can be hugely filled by short (may be monthly/fortnightly) teaching internships by all graduate students in villages/small towns.

- Lack of experts/professionals in rural India: doctors, lawyers, computer trainers, business managers, are examples of professionals that can be utilized for specialized needs. Other ideas to improve the health care in India.

- Election duty: till now this is a nightmare only for government employees. Private citizens are not asked to contribute to maintain fairness. But with changed times, a stronger election commission and use of technology, a fair election is not just dependent on the election officers' honesty. Imagine how smooth and cheap the whole democratic process would become if there were more hands to share the burden.

- Courts: The Indian judicial system is almost crumbling under the pressure of the huge volume of cases it has to handle. We can lend a helping hand by providing non-expert manpower support (as we all don't qualify to be judges or lawyers). But a more important contribution is jury duty.

Jury duty -
Instead of having just one judge decide the case, have a jury of say dozen people. Let them sit through the entire hearing process and listen. And then, ask them to decide, along with the judge. Let the judge hold the veto, so no illiterate judgments can pass. This is a practice in many countries (like US) and was in India until a bad instance had it stopped. I see two big benefits of this. One, making corruption costly - its now 13 times costlier to have it decided in your favor by bribing. Two, education - it will create a vast pool of 'legally literate' individuals who can be used as judges when they become sufficiently qualified.

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The most important condition for any of these ideas to work is having a system of stakes and incentives in place. If people are forced to do it, they find corrupt ways to get away. For example, if I have chances to become a judge one day by doing consistent and sincere jury duty, I might be very interested to do it, and do it well. But the idea is not purely about incentives. It is about people getting involved to make things better.

fixing education-3

Observations and review (cont)

This is a short critical review of higher education in India. Higher education includes graduate and higher studies. This comprises of the simple, obvious and mostly useless (career wise) science and arts studies, and professional studies like engineering and medical. The scenario works differently for both.

First the non-professional higher studies. You pass 10+2, so the next step is to go for graduation (if you are not too poor, otherwise you would be a laborer by now). Till now, the education has been unable to give you any significant livelihood earning skills. So you choose any college in close vicinity, and any course that remains trouble free. So it could be commerce, sociology, maths, botany, whatever. You don't expect to get any career out of this course, and a slow-decent pace of study, may be with some coaching, takes you through. After graduation, you start applying for various government sector jobs, and for higher studies. As the former doesn't exist much now, and needs a big bribe, a post-graduation is a good option. If its professional (MBA/MTech/MCA) a career can be hoped. If not, you go into research-teaching, or something else (which can include an unrelated job/business, or preparing for competitive exams for government jobs)

Professional education. If you have enough awareness (or enough money), you could work hard to earn a ticket to short cut routes to great careers. After 10+2, you could secure admission to a good (so called) engineering or a medical college. After graduation, you could go for something like a CAT entrance or the UPSC exam. Shortcuts to glory-career- and everything else you don't need. Most boys and girls who have the awareness, make the brave choice of trying for the shortcuts. In some regions of the country, taking multiple year drops for them is also popular.

Higher education is a bit less unequal than primary and secondary. Merit and hard-work works to some extent, though you can have a unfair advantage if you are rich or belong to reserved category. Professional education works event better. Engineering and MBA work best, because of an activity called 'campus recruitment'. IITs and IIMs are the best among the bests, and that is arguably, only because they have at their disposal, a huge talent pool fighting for admissions.

The one that works best is professional education, from a decent institute. But the problem is the huge demand supply gap (-a hundred competitors per seat is common) and is mostly too expensive for the average Indian (who earns the per-capita income, 30k right now)

The next parts talk about the wish-list and practical solutions.

being unelectable

Nandan Nilekani thinks he is 'unelectable' (Imagining India, page 3). So do most of the educated-corporatized-professional-elite-decent men in the country.

Why so?

A look into what comprises the 'electable' might reveal. The following lot takes a plunge into politics,
- Son / daughter of a political biggie.
- Descendant of some erstwhile royal family.
- People who chose politics as a 'career', mostly after having earned enough through corrupt businesses to invest in the 'career'
- People with proven musclemen-leadership skills - goonda commanders.

The first two kinds have the natural advantage of easily acquired visibility, and existing organizations at work. But the other two are better contenders. They know the tricks of all trades, know how to get it done. If money buys them party tickets, money can make the rest easy. But they lack good reputation, and charm, and formal-communication skills, and media attention, and proper agenda, and more often, intelligence.

You have money. You have some visibility. You are intelligent. You know how to compete. What's the problem then?

You are ignorant. You are the rich guy of this country who thinks the problem of this country is the bad road that gives you a bumpy ride when you travel from your air-conditioned home to your air-conditioned office in your air-conditioned car.

You are indifferent. This country's system never expects you to get involved. And you never get involved.

You are wrong. You are actually NOT unelectable. Give it a try. You can win. You can figure out how.

*
Second thoughts -

The problems I stated above, no 1 and no 2, are a little too harsh and somewhat unfair to Nandan Nilekani. The intent is not actually to criticize Nandan himself, for whom the comments may actually be completely wrong. It is about the previously mentioned educated-corporatized-professional-elite-decent men of our country.

Elections have ended, and all such men (and women), who tried contesting and getting involved, have lost. What is the reason and what does this indicate ? Among others, the obvious looking 'the public resentment against politicians is on a high, and we urgently need alternatives' theory propagated mostly by media, has to face scrutiny. This belief, however true or false, can not be taken to infer that the alternatives (however good) shall find it easy to gain credibility among the voter masses.

combating terrorism and cockroaches

I was suffering from a weird problem at my new house in Bangalore- Small size cockroaches. They started with a small number, coming sneaked in somewhere in my suitcase handle. Initially, small size and harmless nature earned them enough ignorance from me - I made no effort to get rid of them.

What has this to do with terrorism ?

Within a few months, I realized that I was paying for my ignorance. They stationed and settled themselves in the kitchen, and multiplied. Kept multiplying the way humans do. They were mostly harmless, but thousands of harmless little cockroaches can become a big nuisance. And they were everywhere in the kitchen, and every time I pick something up, there runs the tiny little thing. And they were occasionally expanding their territory out of the kitchen too, and that raised the alarm. They were a threat now.

Tried using Mortien and other pesticides on them, but no use. There is almost a 50 percent chance that the little creature dies if you are spraying the venom on its head. The other ways to mitigate the situation were - buy a refrigerator - as they can enter any utensil, buy a cot (I used to sleep on the ground) - as they will easily climb on you at night, or, kill them all, one by one, manually.

After everything else failed, I tried the last resort. For hours together, using my slippers, I'm doing the massacre. I was as cruel as needed, and determined to kill every last one of them (Just as Sri Lankan Army is to LTTE). But I still failed. There were just too many of them. And unless I make them completely extinct, all they need to do to bug me more is breed more, the one thing they do easily.

But right now, there is not a single one of them left. As my sister gets transfered, the kitchen is left unused for a few months (I used to eat out). And after those few months, I notice they have all disappeared. Not even corpses left behind. Migrated ? died ? - no idea. The cause to this effect is the essential, life-sustaining supply of food material being cut off all this time. No cooking, so no atta-crumbles, no random rice grains, and no garbage. Nothing to eat. Over.

I have been toying with the idea of applying this to a bigger scenario - the biggest threat and nuisance to human (at least Indian) life - terrorism. We (as a country) want to get rid of terrorism and terrorists, no second thoughts/arguments on that. We have already made the mistake of not curbing it in its infancy, probably, and rather ignoring it initially too. Now we want to fight them. We have tried strong defense, tight security, and want to try offense to. We might want to KILL THEM ALL, dismantle and destroy and annihilate all the terror related infrastructure and people and nations supporting them.

We have tried some, and can try most or all of the above. But, by common sense, how can you win over a fidayeen by killing him? Fighting is what they want, fighting is what we give them. Nothing against that, because fighting is what we are left to do.

But not only fighting. Fighting and dying is the only purposes they are there for, but not for us. We are a civilization, we have to fight to win, not to fight to get destroyed. The terror eco-system has its own supply chains. We must cut those supply lines ALSO. No, I'm not hinting at the more abstract end-poverty-and-injustice rhetoric. Terrorism thrives on religious-racist extremism, on emotion, which flows in terror money (illegal trade and donations). Find some ways to curb them too. Find ways to hit some or all of the supply chains of the eco-system.

The idea appears endorsed by a recent Times of India Article (editorial 23 April 2009).

fixing education - 2

Observations and reviews

This part is an observation of the current state of education in India, which is severely bad. It is unequal, insufficient and mostly ineffective, but the observations need to be categorized.

Lets look at the primary (1-5) and secondary (6-12) first -

1. Largely unequal - Mostly overlooked,but this REALLY IS a big problem. The great-Indian-inequality starts here. There are schools that lack even the most basic necessities like classrooms and have very few teachers. Students are being taught (and provided mid day meals) just to finish off a government formality, with no vision of any kind. And then there are schools that have ACs installed even in their toilets! Would a pass-out of the first kind ever be able to stand shoulder to shoulder with the latter one ? Or the other way round, will a citizen groomed from the second kind feel any sense of responsibility towards the first kind who make most of the country ? Will the first kind aim for becoming anything better than a chaprasi, and will the second ever be ready to respect a chaprasi?

2. Mostly boring - study is never fun, school is a burden even for those who can afford. Kids/students not only don't find it interesting, they also find most of it useless. Dropping out is easy if they have an option or incentive. Deep-rooted is the concept that studies are supposed to be uninteresting intrinsically, and need painful hard-work to finish successfully. Strong myth.

3. Lacking in exposure - The Type 1 (too poor schools) are mostly unable impart any exposure to the modern world of technology and other fields. Type 2 (too rich) fare lot better on this, but, one, they are a very small minority, and two, they need to know about the bigger lot, to actually be of any use to the society.

4. Missing and redundant courses - Health and hygiene, economics and commerce, entrepreneurship, basics laws and rights, civic sense and ethics, effective communication are either completely absent or optional / low priority. And there are the unnecessary ones are - the too many language courses, too much of history, geography, unnecessary and useless mathematics (Being able to calculate effects of inflation on savings is more important than solving differential equations, and knowing our fundamental rights is more important than knowing when the first battle of Panipat was fought!).

5. Too much focus on marks - grades - exams - cramming - competition. Too little on learning. Is it not easy to find toppers very lacking in concepts ? How much of the courses you scored 'A' grade in do you remember now or use? A serious mis-focus - study for exams and not necessarily for learning.

6. Little focus on sports. Needless to mention the effects.

This category needs major overhaul, and any improvement can work wonders. But next is a short review of higher education.

fixing education- 1

This is a multi-part series of articles where I have tried to summarize the problems with Indian education and possible solutions. These articles will be continuously edited-updated. Comments-contributions are welcome.

Purpose of education
The purpose of education should answer the 'why' ? Why education? Why should I get educated myself or get my child educated? Why should government invest time and effort on it?

Education enables and empowers, in multiple ways. For individuals, it helps

1. To earn his livelihood - acquire skills that may be useful in earning money. e.g. learning how to drive a car, learning how to program in C, learning English.

2. To be able to find information and knowledge, that might be necessary for him, on his own. This may include learning how to read and comprehend, how to write and express demand, and how to calculate and determine. This also includes how to use books/internet to find answers, information.
For example, an educated man should be able to find a necessary bit of information, (like, where is the nearest hospital,) on his own. To understand what the disease is, he should be able to comprehend. To estimate what the expenses could be, he should be able to do maths And he should know how to find more information, through books or internet. All of this, without being dependent on any body else. That's how education can empower.

3. To live a healthy life. Hygiene, nutrition, exercise, yoga, environmental science and basics of disease prevention.

4. To develop his personality - to have a sense of judgment, understand the importance of hard-work, discipline and handling responsibility. Also to help him realize his talent/potential and develop it.

And for the society,

1. To make citizens out of men and women. People who have civic sense and social responsibility. People who understand that its not right to damage public property, who believe that following the rules is important. People who drive safely. People who throw garbage only in garbage cans.

2. To find individuals who can lead the society - socially and politically. To find leaders. They are the ones who can take responsibility to introduce change. Who see the bigger picture. People who can get help enforce rules and get rule breakers punished. People who can get garbage cleaned. And the garbage cans installed.

3. To find individuals who can take the human civilization ahead. These are the Einsteins-Newtons-Darwins, fire discoverer and first wheel maker. Innovators, inventors, explorers and discoverers. Creators of new knowledge.

As we can see, all of these are necessary. And if a society-civilization ignores any/more of these, it is doomed to extinction (or being conquered by others). Education is one good, institutionalized, effective and widely accepted way of achieving them

Part-2 : Contemporary observations and reviews

Is cinema overpaid ?

Rumour 1: Rajnikant making a cool 40cr off Shivaji
Rumour 2: Akshay Kumar getting 17cr for a forthcoming movie
Rumour 3: Salman Khan demanding a pay package of 50cr for his next movie

If you follow Indian cinema, or at least either Bollywood or Chennai film world, you would immediately sign me off for calling these "rumours". These are facts, you would say. Or that these are stale statistics, as the actual figures are much higher. Whatever. But we got the idea.

Film personalities are paid too heavily in India. They may not have equaled the salaries of their Hollywood counterparts, but still they are too highly paid. Lets look at the most basic facts first -

Per capita Income, India - Rs 30k approx (1,2)
Per capita Income, USA - $47K (=Rs22.5 lack approx)

So if an actor makes $50million in US, he is earning 1060 times the average salary of the US citizen. If an Indian actor makes, lets say Rs20cr, can you make out the difference? Its 6666 times. And the average citizen in US makes 75 times more than an average Indian.

Thats just for the disparity. Now lets see how it really works.

The film works more on the appeal of actors than the skill of storytelling. So the actor is paid a fair share of it. If the film can earn 50cr, what's wrong if the actor demands some 10Cr. A film is not priced based on production costs plus the expected profits, the way all other commodities are. It is priced based on the market demand.

Lets assume a family of five, or a group of five-six cinema goers once in six months, may be as a celebration, may be a good film, may be exams getting over. That leads us to a very crude figure of approximately 1 person every month, out of 5. It means, every month, you have around 20 crore people likely to go to a movie. If the industry decides to release 5-10 films a month, that makes it to average 2 to 4 crore people available for your film. If your tickets are, say, 20rs to 100rs, you probably have a market 40cr to 400cr, ready, all the time. Gosh!

And the actor demands just 10-20% of this. The whole country is out to spend on the movie for him, and you give him just 20% of it? He is the one who converts this 'probable' market to a 'certain' one. By the appeal of his charisma, he pulls in the 'first day first show' goers, who serve as the film's advertisers then on. He also pulls the hero-worshiping-hero-starved Indian masses, who form a part of the crowd more frequent to cinema than my once in six months assumption.

The next possible question is can all of these 20cr people really pay. They are poor. Can they afford it? The answer is YES, they do. Even when its not easy to afford, they do, if they can find the opportunity and convenience. Doesn't matter whether the movies are good.

Entertainment is a very important human need.
Hero is a very important Indian need.
There is a big demand for both. Film industry is just taking advantage of the huge demand-supply gap.

There are few more things film industry takes advantage of -
1. Technology. Cinema as a medium is revolutionary technology. In all older forms of public entertainment (like theater), the act had to performed each time to earn money. Here you perform once, store it on a device, use another device to play it, and you are done. Money comes while that storage device performs on your behalf.

2. Copyright Laws. Government and law makers have made sure that you can't use the device to watch the film, without paying to the producer. Never. Even scientific patents have a period after which they come to public domain. But a film makers dynasty can earn out of the storage device. Of course you can't try showing it to others to earn money, legally without paying to producer.

3. Infrastructure. Mass public entertainment requires huge infrastructure. And whether or not you have enough schools in a small town of the country, you surely can find cinema halls. And then there is a pre-established channel of distributors and other middlemen. All you need to do as a film producer is convince the distributors to release your film all around. Most distributors are lured only when there are bankable performers in the film. But once that is done, scalability is guaranteed.

4. Lack of competition. By co-operating among themselves at various levels (distributors association, film-makers guilds, workers union), film industry makes sure the monopoly works smoothly. Moreover as the industry is hostile, unprofessional, and even criminal, not many people give it a try. Sure we hear of of multitudes of struggling actors-performers, does that number compare anyway with those writing engineering entrance exams?

5. Lack of consumer protection. You spend money on a product or service, you are protected by the law, against possible frauds in quality or lack of service. Except when you spend on cinema. Can you in any way reclaim your money and time wasted on a bad movie? Not by litigation at least.

After so much of protection-monopolies-demand, it is said that the success rate is low. Most films fail. Really? And why?

Year on year, the pay packages of the performers (heros!) doubles. Top gainer movies break previous records. Producers are ready to spend more, investors invest more. Still success rate is low? It is. It is because the industry largely suppresses itself under its own burden. The burden of greed, unprofessional style of work, and lack of creativity. Because the economics that works is, making large profit at one time to cover losses of all other times. The only loser is the movie-goer, whose money is already gone into this system, on the functioning of which, he has no say. (Also, the above calculations are very inaccurate, and a lot of non-trivial factors play crucial roles in most films' success or failure.)
And the worst part is, when someone comes out to say he does it all to 'entertain' the public, while everyone knows he is out only for the money! Actors? Fakers?

But solutions exist.

Proliferate:
What the world came up with to challenge Microsoft's monopoly ? Its Open-source. Make software that Microsoft makes, and also make sure to let the user (and everyone around) have the knowledge of how it is made(the source code).
Spread the knowledge of cinema making. Introduce courses in universities, encourage free lance and hobby film making. Equipment and technology costs are reducing. Make information freely available. Enable all creative individuals to be able to compete with the established cinema.
Personalize:
Encourage regional/local cinema. It not only competes well with the above described 'global' cinema, it serves as capable cultural advertisement medium. So how nice it is when people everywhere get to know and appreciate your culture and way of life by watching interesting movies you make . Win-win!

Bottomline - The purpose of this is not to criticize, as the tone appears. Its an observation, worth attention, which I think was mostly missed.

where is the revolution?

The book of your revolution sits in the pit of your belly, young Indian. Crap it out, and read.

Instead of which, they’re all sitting in front of color TVs and watching cricket and shampoo advertisements

(-The White Tiger, in Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger)

clean your shit yourself

This is the latest good lesson I learned.

In the middle of some conversation Uma tells me how she never allows the toilet cleaner lady to clean her toilet, (the pot, that is). The reason? Do they not clean it properly? No, just that it is not the right thing to do.

On giving more thought to this, I realized that she was very right. It is surely against human dignity. I would never want to clean anybody's toilet, let alone the pot. But this also is work, which is being done with all honesty and hard-work, and hence must be valued and respected (another philosophy of mine). Contradiction?

No. She does ask the lady to clean her bathroom, but not the pot. She can tell where the dividing line is. We all can. We all can make out the difference between the dirty and the dignified, if we care. There is no contradiction.

The more important lesson here is that she deems the cleanup as her own responsibility. Not only that she won't allow the lady to do it, she would do it herself. Think how beautiful and clean would our environment be, if we could all, as individuals, corporations and nations, graciously shoulder the responsibility of pollution cleanup (control).

So,
- Our garbage is our responsibility.
- Never ask another man to do something you think is dirty for you.

Pan chewers will be beaten up

This appeared in Times of India on Saturday 17th Jan 2009. (the article)

The administration of the SSKM hospital in Kolkata has put up a warning board for pan and pan masala chewers entering their premises. The warning is simple, enter chweing a pan and you will be beaten up. They are also planning to put up such messages for smokers.

Though it appears bit bad (and unfortunate) that such messages are really needed. But what brings us to smile is the news that it works. Is it the tough message that works, or the strict implementation?

What this message does is that it not only states the rule/request - like a "no smoking" board, it also informs the people of the consequences of breaking the rule - I should know what punishment I get if I smoke. The punishment in this case can be delivered immidiately - no court of law to be moved. Plus, the punishment is very embarrassing - getting a slap never equates a fine of Rs 500.

A lesser punishment of an immidiately delivered punishment can also work, provided it is implemented strictly. For example, people generally follow traffic rules if they know that a fair chance of getting fined exists. Such a messages, being extreme and unique, attract more attention and support. But the only risk is that the hospital staff someday runs into trouble by beating some criminally minded politically powerful pan chewer.

But the worst risk is getting an image of being farzi. The public should never be allowed to think that the warning is not being implemented strictly. That would not only tarnish the image of the administration, it would make them a laughing stock. More than that, it would further encourage rule breakers and demoralize those who follow.

The bottomline - clear information and strict implementation. Tell me the rule, tell me consequences of breaking it, in simple and clear language. And if I break the rule, punish me, without fail.

Why pay tax ?

I'm compelled to write this because of the tax evading attitude is in the air there days. People don't want to pay taxes, and want to get maximum exemption, even by illegitimate means. Some common logic/excuses -

1. Its my (hard earned) money. Why should I give it to anyone ?

2. Everything I buy is taxed. I am already paying a lot.

3. Don't want my money to go into some corrupt politician's pocket. 

4. Are you stupid? Everybody does it.

My answers to these -

Answer 1. Freedom is not free. The entire setup of armed forces and security personnel/agencies, for protecting our freedom, is financed by public funds. Moreover,  if you have ever been benefitted by governement facilities like public hospitals (AIIMS is one, for eg), government colleges (IITs, IIMs etc), infrastructure (roads, bridges etc), you must know that all these are either fully free or heaviliy subsidized. Even the petrol in our cars is subsidized. Tax is the price we pay for all this.

Answer 2. That calls for a very tough calculation. Add up the value of all the public services, facilities and subsidies you ever recieved. Add up all the tax you ever paid. See which one weighs more. I can bet we get more than we ever paid.

Answer 3. That is a really genuine concern. But is tax evasion a solution? Let us see. Suppose we all decide not to pay taxes and able somehow able to bring down the tax collection figures significantly. Does it really affect the crooked politician ? No really. Even if the cash flow coming from the government funds dries out, being powerful, rich and evil, he has many more ways of upkeeping his earnings, many of them criminal too. Who suffers then? 

Many. But few very direct examples I can quote are -

First - the lower-middle level government employees with their salaries stopped/suspended (that actually happens in UP and Bihar). These are the people (health workers, primary school teachers etc) who actually bring governance/welfare to people.

Second -Pensioners - pensions irregular or stopped. These are elderly people or widows of govt. employees. This includes ex-armymen and widows of soldiers who die fighting to protect us.

Third -the (below) average Indian. Remember the average Indian earns Rs 30-40K per annum. He is desperatly dependant on the government for healthcare, education, ration, employment, credit etc. Is it ok to deprive him even of the 10% (sadly enough) of the govt. expenditure that reaches him?

  

Answer 4. I can't answer that. Not right now. 

More Comments:

1. Tax exemptions (at least most of them) should go. There is no good reason I should be exempted for my conveyance expense, while most of my countrymen struggle to buy a bicycle. Neither should real-estate industry be given an unfair advantage by exempting their customers. There are many more provisions, most them just serving as tax-evasion-enablers. The only ones that look okay are exemption on charity, education loans and retirals.

2. Tax structure should be further simplified. Straightforward tax slabs, so nobody needs experts to understand it all. Less tax for low earners, more for the wealthy, and even more for the even more wealthy. For eg, 10 lacs pa falls in 30% slab, and 10 crore pa too - clearly unfair.

(re)Starting notes

This blog is a representation of my thoughts and ideologies that might be relevent and useful to others.

Starting this after deleting posts from the old blog, I'm planning to make this more public than personal. The reason why I am preserving one old post (Rang de ... somebody .... ) is the beauty of the post. The dilemma of a common man, and the tinge of hopelessness. I am glad that I have come a long way from there.

Its more about obligations and responsibilities now than hopes and dreams.