Black Money - Inputs on Solutions When we discuss about black money we always discuss symptoms and not the reason. Now I have a strong feeling the matter of black money stashed abroad is not a big issue and government once decides to get it back will get it nothing on the earth can stop it. The problem is creating a system where generation of black money stops. Every year we are adding thousands of crores of black money. starting from common man to billionaires to bureaucrats to politicians, everybody is doing it. A common practice in daily market is if you take the bill you pay tax and if you dont then you pay lesser. Hence every common man is contributing to the generation of black money. so if we want to stop it we need to hit the root cause. We are a IT super power and technology is the answer to it. There are certain things coming to my mind. 1. Simplify the IT rules and make Income tax more citizen friendly. While Income Tax department should have the liberty to act against money launderers at the same time they should be held accountable if they harass common public. It has to come under RTI. The todays tax departments and authorities are one of the major contributors to this black money generation. It can not happen without their consent and help. 2. Discourage cash transactions, let everybody in this country have a bank account like the honorable Prime Minister says and most of the transactions should be made through cards debit/credit. Every citizen should have a UID ( something in line with the SSN in US ) and every financial transaction should be recorded. 3. Track the luxury vehicle and high priced luxury real estate purchase, 75% of the black money if not more is stashed this way. Another major place is GOLD, which already has been organised to a very great extent but this is one sector which should be completely organised and govt. should have a track of all the gold buyers and sellers of the country. 4. Avoid high denomination notes. The 500 and 1000 currencies infact should be withdrawn immediately as that brings convenience of transporting black money. 5. RBI should make it mandatory for all Indian Nationals who are operating account off shore to inform and furnish details with them orelse it should be treated as an offence. 6. TAX departments are not inadequately staffed rather over staffed. The government departments have developed the culture of not working and keep adding human capital at the expense of the tax payers money. A serious reform is require across length and breadth of the govt system to bring accountability, responsibility and penal mesaures for non performance. 7. Govt. should stop appeasing by constituting pay commissions every now and then and keep hiking salaries every now and then that again adds up to price rise, inflation and accumulation of black money. 8. Stop all the fringe benefits to govt officials including politicians so that you save a fortune out of it and these benefits make there life easy and accumulating money. 9. Throw away the job security system in govt. jobs, a non performer should be kicked away and a performer should be rewarded. Job security increases their confidence and makes them corrupt. Politicians are visible and branded as corrupt because they are in public life and seek mandate every 5 years but the officials have no fear and no accountability once they are there, its for life time. Its this bunch who are mainly responsible for all the mess and politicians are blamed. Biplab Biswal
Posted on: Sat, 23 Aug 2014 06:47:39 +0000