| > 6. Settling the Ayodhya Dispute: Is it done by Supreme Court or Government? Are you implying that Supreme Court is not independent and Government has a hand in Supreme Court decisions? The Supreme Court only resolved the title issue. The Government on the other hand went out of the way to provide Muslim Party huge land to build a Mosque. Which was welcomed by Muslim Organizations except for Asaduddin Owaisi and few terror organizations like PFI/SDPI. There was no need for the Government to give land to Muslim Organizations to build a Mosque when the title dispute was between private parties. So yes, I applaud the Government for doing what it did. > 5. Economy flourished: Agree with you that India's GDP and Ease of doing business is growing. But I don't know what are real changes that people started noticing on the ground. Highways are being built at record pace but they are charging Toll for most of the highways and those highways are built and operated by private companies. Why shouldn't Toll be charged? I don't see any problem in this as the roads require continuous maintenance too. I don't see anything wrong in Public-Private Participation. Why shouldn't highways be built by private companies? The tender is issued by the Government of India. Paid for by the citizen's taxes. Which goes to the Private companies which employs millions of Indians. So the taxes I pay are indirectly coming back to me in various forms and infrastructure is being built simultaneously. I don't see what exactly is wrong here. Do you want the Government to build highways? I want minimum Governance. I don't want Government to involve in areas where private sector would do a much better job. I rather the Government outsource it to private sector which can do it quickly and efficiently than try to do everything and not succeed in anything. Most public sector companies directly controlled/managed by the Government is always loss making (with exception of ISRO). Look at what happened to Air India. I prefer if Government sells public sector companies to private enterprises and only focus on legislation, security and governance and not involve in building companies. The Government's role is not to build Companies. > 4. Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Act: I think this is also done only to act against muslims of India. I absolutely do not support Triple Talaq and I like that they ended it but I don't think the intension is to protect women rights. Even current PM Modi has left his own wife without giving her a divorce. [4] Modi leaving his own wife was not to get into relations with another woman. Nor was it to not provide alimony. Modi left his wife as he was forced into the engagement when he was a child (teenager) against his wishes (as it was tradition/custom during those days to do child marriage — a custom which he refused to follow and accept). He wanted to live the life of an ascetic so he ran away from home and reached the Himalayas to study under a Sage and become a monk. The Sage instead refused to teach and induct him into the Sanyasi order and told him to enter politics as that is where his destiny lies. Modi and his wife have an understanding between them. If his wife was upset, she could have moved the court anytime. She hasn't. In fact she supports him by attending all his rallies in Gujarat. I, for one, applaud Modi for not consummating his child marriage (he was engaged at tender age of 13 years). This is a very difficult thing to do. Especially in that sort of orthodox society and during those times (this is 1960s rural India). This is nothing but progressive thought. Comparing this to instant triple-talaq is an insult IMHO. Triple-talaq is a disrespect to the woman involved. It is not done out of agreement but pure misuse of Islamic Sharia Law. > 3. Citizenship Amendment Act: The way I see it, it's done only to act against muslims of India. They excluded only muslims from the list and included all other religions. There are conflicting statements from the ministers of Indian Government where Home Minister of India even seems to be indirectly threatening Muslims [2] [3] No. This sort of Act was implemented by the United States too. When it gave fast-track citizenship to Jewish migrants fleeing Nazi Germany. They fled fearing persecution and rightly so. They were granted fast-track Citizenship rightly so. So why then should Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, Parsis fleeing Islamic Nations of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh fearing Religious Persecution not be granted fast-track Citizenship? Did the Government of India bar regular Citizenship to Muslims from neighboring countries? No it did not. Even now Muslims from neighboring countries are taking citizenship through normal route. The articles you linked don't say anything about "threatening Muslims". [2] is about not linking NRC with CAA. NRC is different Bill altogether that hasn't even been drafted, let alone passed in the parliament. NRC is register of Citizens just like every Democratic Country keeps a register of its Citizens to differentiate between legal citizens and illegal aliens so as to provide Government subsidies and services only to legal citizens. The NRC on a State level is only implemented in Assam till now. Assam because of mass illegal migration that has been going on from Bangladesh to India. In neither of the links you provided has the Government threatened Muslims. Illegal aliens will be deported however. This is not a new issue but a long standing demand of majority of Indians from the past 4 decades (ever since the Indo-Pakistan War of 1971). You can check any opinion poll that was conducted regarding this issue and you will get at least 95% of the poll responding with a yes to introducing NRC. However, CAA has no connection to NRC whatsoever. > 2. Implementing GST (Goods and Service Tax): Again I like that government made a strong decision and completed a long pending issue. However, I see the GST has also caused tax rate to be increased a lot on most of the items. There are many different tax rates and businesses has to file a lot more reports on monthly/yearly basis. For example VAT on software products used to be 5% but now GST on software products is 18%. Similarly now people have to pay GST on many essentials and food items. [1] That is again wrong. The earlier VAT and Service Tax regime had a tax-on-tax issue which doesn't exist in GST. Only VAT had input tax credits which could be redeemed. Service Tax did not. The rest 10 other taxes also did not have input tax credits facility. This facility was only provided under GST. Thereby the net product value actually dropped. The compounding tax issue is something that can only be explained by an example. In earlier regime, if I had a 10$ raw product (say I manufacture plastic pellets), the 12 taxes together would have been say 5%. That would be 10.5$ in total. Now if I purchase the raw material to create plastic bottles. The cost of manufacturing plastic bottles is 10$. Now the total cost would be 10+10.5 = 20.5$. Adding 5% tax on that, it would be: 21.0125$. Which is what the end consumer would pay. You would have paid a total tax of 1.0125$. Now let us take case of GST. It would be 10$ + 18% = 11.8$. However, that extra 1.8$ would come back to me as Input Tax Credits. So effectively I have purchased only for 10$. Now I manufacture the product for 10$. The total cost of the product would then be: 10$ + (10$ + 18% * 10$) = 21.8$ (notice that there is no compounding of tax like in previous regime). In this case, my output tax liability would still be 1.8$ only. However, I pay 0$ in tax as I have 1.8$ as credits from my previous purchase which I can utilize to reduce my output tax liability. So the total cost of the product would then be: 21.8$ with me effectively paying 0 tax as a seller. This is a brilliant taxation scheme. In fact, you can not just club in raw material purchases but also any business expenses and bring your tax liability to negative and request a refund from the Tax department. It is called as "cascading tax effect" which GST removes completely. I think you haven't understood how important GST is and you aren't taking advantage of what GST provides if you are only taxing your software product but not claiming Input Tax Credits for your business expenses. Read more about "cascading tax effect" here [4] > 1. Abrogation of Article 370: Honestly I like that government made a strong decision and completed a long pending issue but I don't see how it can improve peace in the region or how it can stop the attacks or how it impacts life of any common citizen. That will happen in due course. Already seeing major improvements in Kashmir, Jammu and Ladakh. Don't forget that the State is not just Kashmir. It also includes Jammu and Ladakh which actually form the major part of the State. However since Ladakh was bifurcated into its own Union Territory, it now gets special attention as it was the most neglected region before the Abrogation happened. And it will take time to bring everything back to normalcy. The spate of Terror attacks has definitely reduced a lot but now there is targeted killings of Kashmiri Hindus. That will also die down slowly as the Indian Army eliminates Terror groups and Terror sympathizers. [1]: https://www.pmcares.gov.in/assets/donation/pdf/Trust_Deed.pd...
[2]: https://www.pmcares.gov.in/en/web/page/about_us.
[3]: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/right-and-wrong/we...
[4]: https://quickbooks.intuit.com/in/resources/gst-center/cascad... |