There is an ambiguous provision to levy income tax on “dairying”. Either the provision should be removed or it should be clarified that it does not include dairy farmers. Dairying is a part of agriculture and as per the Constitution, it is a state subject.
Those in power may not yet be accepting blame for the barrage of negative news on the state of the economy, but cracks are appearing in the facade. In such tumultuous times, the finance minister began the pre-budget ritual of consultations. Having inherited a mess, she faces the challenge of very limited latitude for budgetary allocations. Her task is compounded by a bureaucratic decision-making process that is incapable of factoring the imponderabilia of actual livelihoods — one that does not even properly enumerate those committing suicide.
The financialisation of policy-making has set us on an unforgiving trajectory where the corporate sector has wrung out a commitment from the government of spending Rs 102 lakh crore on infrastructure projects. It would have been wiser to prioritise investments in human capital.
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