Nepali Politics: Cant stay without commenting!!!

There is no difference between entire Nepal and my room in Hyderabad these days, in terms of power trouble. There is frequent electricity power cut in Hyderabad these days and in Nepal, both political power in addition to electricity power has dried up.

My laptop has some power back up and I have been rendered jobless in this dark night. It’s dark enough to be called dark at this night as the lights from candles are fading away even before they reach me.

I am jobless in this dark night, have been compelled to use internet through wireless( wi-fi) card. Had there been power, I would be using internet only but my net would be certainly faster on broadband n I would be roaming from one website to another. Now, in this powerless darkness, we have limited option and feel like commenting about power-political power, of course.

This week, when we start commenting on power and political power in Nepal, the name cerianly erupts in mind is Prachanda- the most hated, despiged, loved, hailed as leader etc. etc. depending on your choice and political inclination.

We are all aware of political dramas unfolding in Nepal. the sacking of army chief by Government, re-instatement of Army chief by President, PM’s prachanda’s resignation and his speech against foreign power. He said that he held his head high when foreign powers were forcing him to bend as per their wishes.

Many hailed Prachanda——-it was a ‘Hail Prachanda Era’.

In some speech, it was reported that he said that his resignation was a missile against foreign dogs or something like that. Hail Prachanda became louder.

N Today’s THE HINDU, one Indian Newspaper, published Prachanda’s interview that came as a real missile to many of us. U can see his interview and new related to this here:

THE HINDU NEWS    

THE HINDU NEWS   

Here, in the above news, Mr. Prachanda shamelessly reveals that he asked for India’s help to resolve the issue. Is that his greatness? When army row is Nepal’s internal matter, why he approached for India’s help?

That means all his tallks on nationality and not being influenced by foreign interference is just a tall claim, and how long he expects to make people fool by his inconsistent big talks??

I am sure we will soon hear on our backyard people saying, “Down with Prachanda”.

New Education Tax in Nepal: An Open Letter to Nepalese Finance Minister

This letter is written as comment to an article published by Dr. Baburam Bhattarai in his Facebook Profile. Dr. Baburam Bhattrai is Finance Minister of Nepal. The article that has been published in Dr. Bhattrai’s Facebook profile is of one of the Editorials published in THE KATHMANDU POST.

My Dear Bhattarai,

I am not sure if you are the same who we presume you to be, the Finance Minister of Nepal. I hope that you are the same Dr. Baburam Bhattarai maintaining your facebook profile by yourself. I will be delighted to know even if your close well-wisher is maintaining your profile on your behalf and of course, on your supervision.

Dear Hon’ble FM, I am after this news of educational tax/educational cess/educational service tax, whatever name is more appropriate, to know more about it and to understand its modalities. My efforts to know more has become very futile and am not able to get any satisfactory answer how this tax will be administered. I have a clear answer why this tax has been imposed but how it will be administered is far from clear, at least to me. The above Post editorial also throws light of Rambhakti only to a babu (referred to government in India) like you but is not clear what negative impact can it make to people of this country.

I have some doubts and opinion about this tax which I am going to raise in this comment and I hope that you will respond at least to some comments. I do not be waiting your direct reply to me as that is probably not possible but hope that you take your own time to address some of the issues.

Now, let me talk about the impacts of this tax. As I read some online news sites sometimes back, one of the eminently respectable Minister in the field of education of your cabinet said that it is the tax that shall be paid by private School organizations whereas the some learned Inland Revenue Department’s officers opined that parents of school going kids need to pay this extra tax out of their pockets. I have not understood if the tax is direct in nature or indirect where the liability is shifted to the customers (school going kids’ parents).

Assume that before the tax is imposed, A School is charging Rs 1000 per admission and Rs. 100 per month as tuition fees for 12 months. Now, does your law prohibits these schools to charge Rs. 1000 as admission cost and Rs. 50 as Education Cess (hereinafter referred as ‘EC’) and Rs. 1200 as tuition fees and Rs 60 as EC for a year? I do not think so. And if they charge in that way, the government hopefully gets Rs. 50+ Rs. 60= Rs. 110 as Education Cess per student and that also when these School administrations do not play fraud and create forge documents bribing notoriously corrupt administration. Assume that your kitty swells by Rs. 110 per student per year, but who has to face the burden finally?

Has the per capita income of people grown up in the last 6-7 months after you formed government? Can they bear this increased cost? If yes, what are the supporting data/statistics in addition to Mao and Marx says so, if their ideology says anything of this nature.

Assume that these school administrators do not raise separate invoices but raise a single amount without bifurcating the basic costs and tax amount and give parents a single invoice of Rs. 2310/- in our above example, what remedy and alternatives these parents have except to sell out more money from their pockets?

Your 5% Education Cess is surely going to burn the customers’ pockets only and the end results is that may be some parents have to drop their kids from the school? is this what you want?????

Any way out?

I think here You and I agree on one point. Yes, the EC should be imposed to education sector and on private organizations but modalities need to be clearly worked out before imposing this tax.

The first and foremost but fundamentally flawed presumption here is that all private schools earn profits and all are there for selfish motive of making surplus profits.

We need to stop seeing private sector as evil organ of state. We need to appreciate the contributions they have made in this country when you revolutionists were busy demolishing state infrastructures without making any distinctions for what communists are known for. Anyway, my point is that there are private schools today even in country side imparting good education. These schools can not be compared with those heavy weight business institutions which are educational in nature.

So, we need to make a distinction between who are liable not to pay tax and who are liable? How?

1. The Amount of Revenue earned: We can make a flat exemption limit something like an institution earning less than Rs. 10,00,000 per year is exempted from this additional tax. This ten or nine or may be five, should be decided from the committee of experts which are naturally endowed with more wisdom than me. Here, when I say ten, it is not profit but the total income received by that private school without any deductions.

2. We can designate areas in various levels and can provide exemptions to schools straightway even if their total turnover is more than that threshold limit. For example, a private school opened in a VDC in Karnali Zone can be exempted from this tax even if their turnover is more than threshold limit. Or we can provide incentives to private schools exempting from this tax if they are opened in less developed areas and where the backward classes reside. Say, exemption from this tax if cost per student per year is less than Rs. 1000, and exemption continues for 10 straight years. If we really need education to all, we need to provide incentives to private sectors to go to villages. There is no point just to encourage YCL to go to villages and continue their unholy violence.

3. On what turnover, you are going to impose that 5% EC? This is one of the fundamental factor to decide how progressive you are. If you are saying that School A which earns 1000 as profit and School B which earns 20 as profit should pay tax at uniform rate of 5% i.e.; Rs. 50 and Re. 1, that is just proportional to their income and School B is in fact, paying more in terms of money value as determined as per basic principles of economics. The principle of diminishing marginal utility makes Re. 1 for School B more valuable than Rs. 50 for School A. This is a good incentive to hide incomes, not to get registered, to forge documents, to bribe public servants and to do many more illegal things than to pay tax.

Then, what should be done???

First of all, it should be decided that in which income, the tax is to be levied. It comes to my mind that most naturally, it should be levied on profits before tax after all the deductions and exemptions if any as per other fiscal legislations.

Suppose as said by above editorial, the rate of income tax for Educational body is 25% as per company law or under any law as it has been administered today.

Suppose School A earns 1000 Rs. profit and School B earns Rs. 20 as Profit. Then, their tax liability till today will be Rs. 250 and Rs. 5. Now, the 5% EC should come here. It should be 5% of Rs. 250 for School A, and 5% of Rs. 5 for School B. That means total accumulated tax that School A and School B shall pay will be Rs. 262.50 and 5.25 respectively.

This makes their EC liability proportional to Educational tax liability. This is little more scientific than other ways and more progressive.

There can be another way to tax educational bodies which is more progressive based on certain slabs. Therefore, the more they earn, the higher percentage of tax they have to pay. The higher percentage of tax they have to pay, the higher amounts of tax they need to pay. Therefore, instead of imposing anything extra 5% tax uniformly, we need to work out systematic tax levy mechanism where these 5% will be automatically couched and tax be levied progressively.

That’s all for now. Hope I be back to comment more on other matters.

Constututional Assembly Debates: An example

This is a small piece of Constitutional Assembly Debates in India that took place while forming India’s Constitution. They are very great source of law and study of it gives us idea how the issues are debated in Assembly. This is just a piece. For full Reading, Follow the instruction provided in the Article.

The Name of the person is the one who is speaking and in brackets, it gives us idea where he came from and what is his designation. They are talking on very many issues that you know when you read it. The name and designation is not so important, focus on the texts and what they have to say on a particular topic.

जोखिमपूर्ण जातीय विभाजन/Risky ethnic Devides.

(In the series of Consolidating Debates on Constituent Assembly Election and prospects of Federalism, these two articles in Nepali and translation in English have been published here. I agree most of the points presented in this Article.) 

जोखिमपूर्ण जातीय विभाजन
डा. आलोक बोहरा
कसरी युगौंदेखिका नेपाली समस्याको समाधान नेपाललाई जातीय धारमा विभाजन गरेर सम्पन्न गर्न सकिन्छ ? जातीय तथा लैंगिक विभेद, आर्थिक अभाव, पश्चिमी पहाडका भोकमरी तथा खाद्य सुरक्षाका समस्या, कमजोर प्रशासन संयन्त्र, स्वास्थ्य सेवाको अभाव, पर्यावरणीय असन्तुलन, सहरी अपराधहरू, बढ्दो जनसंख्याको चाप, बेरोजगारी, शैक्षिक भिन्नता, प्राकृतिक प्रकोपहरू जस्तै- तराईको बाढी सामना गर्ने असमर्थता, बालश्रम, चेलीबेटी बेचबिखन, सामन्ती प्रथा र कतिपय अकर्मण्यता इत्यादि सबै नेपाली समस्या हुन्, न कि मधेसी, लिम्बुवान, बाह्मण । 

Constituent Assembly Election and Federal System

[Though I disagree with the learned Authors on some of the minor points in this Article, I hope that this Article will make an interesting and educative reading. I will make some of my "notes of dissent" clear after some days, in a separate Article.]

 

By Surendra R Devkota and Shiva Gautam

 

Nepal, since its existence, never had a citizen-centered governance structure. All state machineries during the Rana and earlier regimes were focused on only tax collection from the citizens and power consolidation at the center.

 

Come One, Come All To Vote Your Destiny: Election Commission

[ My few Words: This article is a copy-paste Article written by Dinesh Wagle in United We Blog. I have copied this article from UWB's website as it helps to spread information about Constituent Assembly Election in Nepal. For further information about its original publication, see the bottom of this Article. All Copyrights over the Article and images belong to Original Authors.]

By Dinesh Wagle

As part of its unprecedented campaign, Election Commission will send 8 thousand volunteers in each and every house of all villages of Nepal to deliver invitation cards: You and your family members [who are registered at the Commission] are heartily invited to the nearby voting both for the Constituent Assembly election on November 22.

An invitation to your family to vote. Sketch by Dewen via Kantipur

Something politically motivated!!!!

I have not written anything in my blog so many days. So, feeling like I have missed out something.
I am somewhere far from my temporary-but-usual place. People call it Hi-Tech City. Yes, Hi-Tech City of Hyderabad. Flooded with fancy buildings, fancy offices with fancy names. It has given job to many, status to many, and of course, quick bucks to many. Hi-Tech City in Hyderabad is a part of changing Hyderabad to Cyberabad.

NEPAL in a New Height

It is a great pleasure for this blogger to share this News with its Readers. The date for Constituent Election (Sambidhan Sabha) has been declared in Nepal and It is going to be Mansir 6, according to Nepali Calender, i,e; November 22, 2007.

This is an election that decides the fate of ill fated monarchy in Nepal. That means, the oppressive royal regime and its coterie in Nepal can not impose their criminal, anti-social and undemocratic actions on 27 million freedom loving people.