We pay taxes at the rate of 33 % in India so as to share the common benefits of
- transportation (bad roads) ,slightly better railways ,crowded airports
- defense forces ( that cannot protect us from INTELLIGENCE lapses like bombs or Mumbai Massacres)
- spacecrafts and satellite launches (like to the Moon which help the Indian country like an anti depressant helps a victim but less uplifting than Sachin Tendulkar can do at far cheaper rates with a century in cricket)
- foreign trips of our leaders who feel proud shaking hands with Obama and feel even more proud when they are flattered with the potential of a billion strong market which can go no where but up. With 80 % people stoically living with out protest on less than half a dollar a day – Potential is all we have
- sanitation (whose smells follow you everywhere to make India shining seem like India sliming)
- health care which has the worlds most underpaid doctors (apart from Cuba) and where as many as 50 babies can be put in an overcrowded pre birth nursery while the health minister promises to ban smoking in Bollywood movies
- rivers polluted so much that when we die and our ashes are thrown in the Ganges , they mingle with the muck of out living bretheren
My fellow Indian Institute of Management batchmates are 1000 strong , earn an average of 15 lakhs (after 7 years of working) and pay a consolidated tax bill of 300 million rupees (excluding those who have emigrated ), whine about it over 300 Rs a peg of Vodka ,and decry the system as bad .
That is just one batch – if you add up all the IIM Batches their contribution would vary based on income and immigration rates.
We are equally smug about not voting in elections , and seeking green cards or HB1 visas while feeling jingoistic pride in our ancient C U L T U R E, and we are generally considered and admired as model peace loving citizens and success stories by the rest of the world, by our countrymen as educated elite and success stories by non educated people.
From birth till death,we Indians pay the Indian state taxes, bribes, bakshish ( but not in that order) and in return ask and are mostly mostly given the right not to be molested (unless we argue too much )—– unlike other developing world citizens.
We are proud of this development and sneer at the shallow intellectualism of the materialistic West and shrug at the development of the not so democratic yellow East.
We are so proud so we wont go out to vote.We will turn the AC up, and insert the DVD of the latest Hollywood movie for a lovely holiday on election day.
And we will whine about the low ROI on our 33 % taxes as we apply for the immigration visas.
Jai Ho !
*(IIM -Indian equivalent of Ivy League –)
These are the author’s personal views and not to be attributed to anyone else – at all.
